aass__sji_aii 
Book .Jir 



TREE PLANTING, 

FORESTRY IN EUROPE, 



AND OTHER PAPERS. 




B. a. NORTHROP, 

Sboretaet op Connecticut Board of Education. 



NEW HAVEN: 
TUTTLE, MOREHOUSE & TAYLOR. 
1 8 80. 




Public interest in home and rural adornment is rapidly increasing in Connec- 
ticut, where some fifty assoeiations for Village Improvement have been already 
organized. A little foresight wiU show that no community can afford to be 
without such an association. This good work should go on till not a school 
house, dwelling or street is left without the simple and grand adornment of 
shade trees, or shrubbery, vines, flowers or lawn. In many towns such organi- 
zations have already done incalculable good in promoting public health, culti- 
vating public spirit, quickening social and intellectual life, and enhancing the 
value of real estate. I shall be happy to cooperate with pubHc-spirited citizens 
who are moving in this matter, and will lecture on this subject without charge 
either for services or expenses in any town in Connecticut. Tree -planting, 
both economic and ornamental, commands new attention year by year. These 
papers, reprinted from an official Eeport, retain a few local allusions to show 
the original aim of the writer and the apphcation of kindred plans and prin- 
ciples to other fields. 



CONTENTS. 



Tree Planting, - - - - - - - - 3 

Schools of Forestry, 33 

Industrial Schools, - - - - - - - - 50 

Education and Labor, - - - - - - 61 

What Boys are Reading, 65 

Wliat Should our Boys Read ? - - - - - - 11 

Compulsory Education in England, - - - - - - t5 

Schools and Communism, - 81 

Schools and Pauperism, 85 

National Schools, - 90 

Decennary of Free Schools, - - - - - - - 95 

Neglected Children, - - , . . - . lOO 

French Yiews of American Schools, ' - - - - - 103 

Clinton Rural Improvement Association, - - - - 124 

.r easier ivctm 



ECONOMIC TREE-PLANTING. 



BY HON. B. G. NORTHROP. 

Being neither a scientist nor farmer, I have made no origi- 
nal investigations or practical experiments in forestry. Lest 
I may seem presumptuous in attempting to instruct others on 
a great subject in which I am myself a novice, reference is 
made to my opportunities for learning the matured views of 
those who, devoting their lives to this study, have made inves- 
tigations and experiments on a broad scale. Three months 
of last summer were occupied in visiting the Foresters," 
forest schools, and forest plantations of Europe. The letter of 
Governor Hubbard,* and one from Hon. Wm. M. Evarts, Sec- 
retary of State, bespeaking the cooperation of our ministers 
and consuls, whose aid might be needed, gave free access to 
all desired sources of information, especially the official 
Departments of Forestry," forest schools and their professors, 
forest plantations, national, communal, or private, and their 
managers, and the parks and gardens on the Continent and in 
England. With note-book always in hand, I conferred with 
numerous authors in this department, as well as practical 
foresters. Gathering facts from so many experts, and con- 
densing statements from so many sources, it is impracticable 
in this address to formally quote their language, which I have 
freely modified and abridged. In addition to the professors 
of the forest schools visited, and to many diplomatic agents, I 

* Executive Department, Hartford, Conn., June 12, 1877. 
I have signed these presents for the purpose of duly accrediting the Hon. 
B. G. Northrop, of the Board of Education of this State, Avho is commissioned 
by said Board to visit the Schools of Forestry and Forest Plantations, and the 
Industrial Schools of Europe, and report the results of his observations for the 
benefit of the schools and people of this State, and especially to encourage the 
reclamation of waste lands by the propagation of trees. I beg to commend Mr. 
Northrop to the courtesies and co-operation of all persons to whom these pres- 
ents shall come, and particularly to those who are managers of the institutions 
above named, and are interested therein. In testimony whereof, I have hereunto 
set my hand. BICHARD D. HUBBARD. 



4 



am especially indebted to Hon. George P. Marsh, the Ameri- 
can Minister to Rome, Captain Campbell Walker, Conserva- 
tor of State Forests in New Zealand, J. C. Brown, LL. D., long 
Colonial Botanist at Cape of Good Hope, and J. McGregor, 
Forester of the Duke of Athole, for information given in per- 
sonal interviews as well as for that derived from their pub- 
lished works. 

The literature of forestry, already large, is now rapidly 
increasing by the cooperation of professors in forest schools, 
and government officials specially commissioned to investi- 
gate different branches of the subject, and many other writers. 
A German catalogue gives the titles of 1,815 volumes on 
forestry issued prior to 1842, and the titles of 650 works pub- 
lished in the six years prior to 1876. On an average, over 
one hundred new books on forestry appear annually in the 
German language. One of the Spanish Commissioners to the 
Centennial Exposition, Seiior Morera, published a list of 
1,126 volumes on forestry in the Spanish language alone. 

Little attention has been given in this country to sylvicul- 
ture. Nature has been wonderfully bountiful in the magnifi- 
cent forests which once adorned this land, but our people 
have been recklessly prodigal in wasting this rich inheritance. 
As if they were the enemies of man, forests have been con- 
sumed without a thought of renewing them, and fire has been 
made to help the axe in destroying what it required ages to 
produce. 

The progress of a nation may be measured to a large extent 
by its consumption of wood. Extensively as brick, stone, and 
iron may be substituted for wood in building, and coal used for 
fuel, the timber demand for purposes of utility and ornament 
will everywhere increase as civilization advances. The rail- 
ways are enormous consumers of wood. Says Professor C. S. 
Sargent : Supposing the life of a sleeper is seven years, the 
85,000 miles of track in the United States consume annually 
34,000,000 sleepers, or thirty years' growth on 68,000 acres 
of the best natural woodlands. At least 125,000 miles of fencing 
are required to enclose the railroads of the country, costing 
not less than 143,000,000, with large expenditures for annual 



5 



repairs. For the construction of 65,000 miles of telegraph 
lines in the United States, 2,000,000 trees for poles were 
required, while the annual repairs must call for 250,000 more." 
A late Agricultural Report of Illinois says : The fences of 
the United States cost more than any other class of property 
except real estate and railroads ; the total amount being esti- 
mated at -eighteen hundred millions of dollars, with an annual 
expense of ninety-eight millions for repairs." Desirable as 
may be live hedges, stone walls or ditches, wooden fences are 
likely to be long used. 

But aside from the need of fencing, and the demands for 
railway and telegraph companies, there are nearly seventy 
occupations enumerated in the last United States census 
which in whole or in part use wood as their raw material 
for manufacture, employing more than one million of 
artisans, such as carpenters, cabinet-makers, chair-makers, 
coach-makers, coopers, boat and ship builders, wheelwrights, 
manufacturers of brooms, brushes, matches, furniture, agri- 
cultural implements, machinery and the like. There are 
63,928 establishments manufacturing articles made entirely 
of wood, employing 393,387 persons, and using materials 
worth 1309,921,403 annually. There are, besides, 109,512 
establishments in which wood is an important material, as for 
example, in pianos, carriages, bridges and ships, employing 
700,915 persons, and using materials worth $488,530,844. 
With these facts before us, there need be no fear of an over- 
production of wood. It is estimated that in our whole coun- 
try over three million acres of wood-growing land are cleared 
annually, and this usually without any proper plans for refor- 
esting them. Favorably situated as Connecticut is, in the 
midst of these industries and near the great market centers, 
and with new calls for exportation, there is sure to be a grow- 
ing demand for all desirable lumber. 

George Peabody, who did so much to encourage schools and 
learning, originated the motto, so happily illustrated by his 
own munificent gifts to promote education : Education — the 
debt of the present to future generations." We owe it to our 
children to leave our lands the better for our tillage, and we 



6 



wrong both ourselves and them if our fields are impoverished 
by our improvidence. But much as foresight is admired 
when its predictions are realized and its achievements made, 
all history too plainly tells that the mass of men are not 
easily persuaded to provide for exigencies far in the future. 
It was more than two centuries after the death of Bernard 
Palissy, the famous " Potter of the Tuilleries," and after 
many sad lessons of devastating mountain torrents resulting 
from excessive forest denudation, before France learned to 
heed his earnest warning. Expressing his indignation at the 
folly of such general destruction of the woods he said: " I call 
it not error, but a curse and a calamity to all France. When 
I consider the value of the least clump of trees, I marvel at the 
great ignorance of men who do now-a-days study only to break 
down, fell and waste the fair forests which their forefathers did 
guard so choicely. I would think no evil of them for cutting 
down the woods, did they but replant some part of them 
again, but they care naught for the time to come, neither 
reck they of the great damage they do to their children." In 
1680, the eminent French statesman, Colbert, said to Louis 
XIY. : " France will perish for want of wood." 

It was not, however, till 1859 and 1860 that stringent laws 
were passed for the protection of existing woodlands and the 
formation of new forests. The former of these laws passed 
the Assembly by a vote of 216 against 4, and the latter with 
but a single negative voice. The unanimity with which these 
laws were enacted, though they seriously interfere with the 
rights of private domain, shows at last the strength of the 
popular conviction that the protection and extension of forests 
were matters of national interest and necessity, and would 
arrest the devastations of mountain torrents and river inun- 
dations. The law of 1860 appropriated 10,000,000 francs, 
at the rate of 1,000,000 a year, in aiding the replanting of 
woods. In 1865 a bill was passed for securing the soil in ex- 
posed localities by grading, and the formation of greensward. 

This measure, proved to be beneficial in France, Mr. Marsh 
highly recommends for adoption in the United States, The 
* leading features of this system are marking out and securing 



7 



from pasturage and browsing a zone along the banks of ravines, 
which is carefully turfed and planted with shrubs and trees ; 
consolidating the scarps of the ravines by grading and wattling 
and establishing barriers of solid masonry, or more commonly 
of fascines, or other simple materials across the bed of the 
stream, and cutting narrow terraces along the scarps. Many 
hundred ravines, formerly the channels of formidable torrents, 
have been secured by barriers, and by grading and planting, 
and the success of the system has far surpassed all expectation. 
The plan of circling^ long used in this country, is now adopted 
in France. This plan prevents the wash of tlie surface, and 
provides irrigation by running horizontal furrows along tlie 
hill-sides, and thus cheaply securing a succession of small 
terraces, checking the rapid flow of the surface water, obvi- 
ating one cause of inundations, and greatly fertilizing the 
lands thus irrigated. 

The evils of widespread forest denudation both as regards 
climatic changes, uniform flow of springs and streams, devas- 
tation by mountain torrents, and the exhaustion of once fertile 
lands, have been long and sadly felt in the Old World. Many 
rich and fertile countries have become arid wastes when 
denuded of trees. The Mediterranean coast of Africa is a 
case in point. Tunis and Algiers were once fertile regions, 
supporting a dense population. Their decadence is traceable 
largely to the destruction of their forests. Rentzsch ascribes 
the political decadence of Spain almost wholly to the destruc- 
tion of the forests. 

Mr. George P. Marsh says: "There are parts of Asia 
Minor, of Northern Africa, of Greece, and even of Alpine 
Europe, where causes set in action by man have brought the 
face of the earth to a desolation as complete as that of the 
moon, and yet they are known to have been once covered with 
luxuriant woods, verdant pastures, and fertile meadows; and 
a dense population formerly inhabited those now lonely dis- 
tricts. The fairest and fruitfulest provinces of the Roman 
empire once endowed with the greatest superiority of soil, 
climate, and position, are completely exhausted of their fer- 
tility, or so diminished in their productiveness as, with the 



8 



exception of a few favored cases that have escaped the general 
ruin, to be no longer capable of affording sustenance to civil- 
ized man. If to this realm of desolation we add the now 
wasted and solitary soils of Persia and the remoter East, that 
once fed their millions with milk and honey, we shall see that 
a territory larger than all Europe, the abundance of which 
sustained in by-gone centuries a population scarcely inferior to 
that of the whole Christian world at the present day, has been 
entirely withdrawn from human use, or at best is inhabited by 
tribes too few, poor, and uncultivated to contribute anything 
to the general, moral, or material interests of mankind. The 
destructive changes occasioned by the agency of man upon the 
flanks of the Alpg, the Appenines, the Pyrenees, and other 
mountain ranges of Central and Southern Europe, and the 
progress of physical deterioration, have become so rapid that 
in some localities a single generation has witnessed the begin- 
ning and the end of the melancholy revolution. A destruction 
like that which has overwhelmed many once beautiful and 
fertile regions of Europe awaits an important part of the ter- 
ritory of the United States, unless prompt measures are taken 
to check the action of the destructive causes already in 
operation." 

Indeed we have already a great Sahara in Connecticut pro- 
duced by improvidence and neglect. The local traditions tell us 
that the ''sand-blow," covering so large an area in the towns 
of North Haven and Wallingford, which, with its clouds 
of dust, is a literal eye-sore to all travelers on the New Haven 
& Hartford Railway, was once finely wooded. Here and 
there clumps of low cedars and pines, the lone relics of a 
former growth, still resist the drifting sands. So general is 
the conviction that this sand blow is utterly irreclaimable 
that it has long since been abandoned to hopeless sterility. 
I shall be happily disappointed if my plan for utilizing it is 
not regarded by many farmers as visionary and impracticable. 
The feasibility of reclaiming the barren sands of Connecti- 
cut, even the wastes of Wallingford and North Haven, is 
proved by many facts. While agent of the Massachusetts 
State Board of Education I visited every town of that State, 



9 



and found thousands of acres in Plymouth and Barnstable 
counties — once sandy plains — covered with fine forests. The 
common pitch pine has there been most generally used for the 
reclamation of sand barrens. Recently the Scotch pine has 
been widely planted. The seeds were sometimes sowed broad- 
cast, and sometimes dropped in furrows. The cost was trifling, 
and the profit has been satisfactory. 

Hummel attributes the desolation of the Karst, the high 
plateau lying north of Trieste — until recently one of the most 
parched and barren districts in Europe — to the felling of its 
woods, centuries ago, to build the navies of Venice. The 
Austrian government is now making energetic, and thus far 
successful efforts for the reclamation of this desolate waste, 
having planted over half a million of young trees, and sown 
great quantities of seed. In the vicinity of Antwerp less than 
fifty years ago was a vast desolate plain. Looking to-day in 
the same direction from the spire of the cathedral, one can 
see nothing but a forest, whose limits seem lost in the horizon. 
Forest plantations have transformed those barren lands into 
fertile fields. French writers point with pride to an experi- 
ment begun eighty years ago on the very crest of a peninsula 
in Dauphiny, where stands a long stretch of fine forest, and 
where it had been confidently affirmed trees could not be made 
to grow. 

On the Adriatic, Baltic, Mediterranean, Biscayan, and other 
coasts, the disastrous encroachments of tlie sea have been 
checked by forest plantations. Extensive plains, once barren 
sands south of Berlin, about Odessa and north of the Black 
Sea and vast steppes in Russia, are now well wooded. 
R. Douglass & Sons of Waukegan, Illinois, who have been 
the pioneers in promoting economic tree planting in the West, 
began four years ago the experiment of reclaiming barren sand 
ridges near the shore of Lake Michigan, trying pitch pine, 
white pine, Austrian pine, and Scotch pine. Here, as on 
Cape Cod, the Scotch pine proved the best for reclaiming 
sandy barrens. With these facts from abroad and at home it 
cannot be denied that even the poorest soils in Connecticut 
may be reclaimed. The Pinus maritima, which proved best 



10 

for the sandy soils in France, is not adapted to the climate of 
New England. It has been amply tried, and though growing 
rapidly for a season or two, is likely to winter-kill. But our 
native pitch pine, and still better the Scotch pine, are specially 
adapted to sandy barrens. 

Daniel Webster planted many pines at Marshfield, and 
induced farmers in Plymouth and Barnstable counties to try 
the same experiment. This has been done very extensively 
by Mr. J. S. Fay, in Falmouth, near Wood's Hole. In visit- 
ing Falmouth I was happily impressed with the beauty and 
remarkable growth of his tree plantations. There, is a tract 
of over one hundred and twenty-five acres now densely cov- 
ered with fine trees. When purchased by him, Mr. Fay 
says, "It was a barren waste, the soil dry and worn out. 
On a hundred acres there was not a tree of any kind, unless 
an oak sprang out from the huckleberry bushes here and 
there, but hardly lifting its head above them. Indeed, when I 
bought my place in 1853, except a few stunted cedars on Par- 
ker's Point and in the swamps, there was not an evergreen 
tree within three miles of my house, and hardly any tree of 
any kind in sight of it. It was maintained that trees could 
not be made to grow there. The seeds sown were of the 
native pitch pine with some white pine, tlie Austrian, Scotch, 
and Corsican pine, the Norway spruce, and the European 
larch- — in all about thirty-five thousand imported plants, and 
many thousand native pines. As to the kinds which have 
done the best, the Scotch pine from the seed, including 
prompt germination, has proved the best grower, and very 
hardy. The Norway spruce and English oak have done well. 
The larch did not start well from the seed, but from the nurs- 
ery or as imported it has grown remarkably. The llardy 
Scotch pine does finely either from tiie seed or the nursery. 
All these imported trees have done better than the native pitch 
pine. The larches are about forty feet high, and fourteen 
inches in diameter one foot from the ground. Some Scotch 
pines from seed sown in 1861, , well situated and in good soil, , 
are thirty feet high, and ten inches through, a foot from the 
ground. As to profits, one thing is sure. The land, originally 



11 



poor, has been enriched by the deposit of thousands of loads 
of leaves upon it, and by the shade afforded, while the soil has 
been lightened and lifted by the permeation of the roots of 
the trees; and though no present profit has been yet realized, 
(which already might have been by sales of the wood,) it 
should be considered as an investment for future results. 
Considering the position of my place, on a coast exposed to 
violent sea winds permeated with salt spray, the vigorous 
growth and promising appearance of my forest plantations are 
very encouraging to those more favorably placed. Not only 
may the destruction of our forests be partially remedied at a 
cheap cost, but the waste and sterility of our land by long cul- 
tivating be replaced with fertility by the simple process of 
nature." 

The Scotch fir or pine, which Mr. Fay so highly commends, 
is a native of the Highlands, a hardy tree, and the most rapid 
grower of all the evergreens suited to our climate — the Euro- 
pean larch, a still more rapid grower, being deciduous. It will 
thrive in the most dissimilar soils and on poorest sands where 
most other evergreens will not flourish, and makes an excel- 
lent wind-break. Its timber is not duly appreciated in this 
country. In England it is as highly prized as the best Baltic 
pine, and regarded as superior to our white pine for general 
purposes. While skeptical on this point, we must at least ad- 
mit that it is harder, more durable, and more resinous than 
the white pine. It is light, stiff, and strong, freer from knots 
than any other fir, easily worked, and well adapted to all kinds 
of house carpentry. It is extensively used for masts and in 
naval architecture. In England it yields large quantities of 
tar, turpentine, and resin. Next to the larch it is the tree 
most commonly planted in Great Britain. It should be ex- 
tensively used in Connecticut in reclaiming lands too poor for 
the larch. It proved a great success in the sandy wastes of 
Kincorth and Culbin in Scotland, which are now thriving 
forests. 

Among the foresters of largest experience in Europe, I found 
the planting out system growing in favor, in place of sowing 
the seed, whether in furrows or broadcast in the fields where 



12 

the trees are to remain. If sowing is adopted, the land, ex- 
cept on sand barrens, must be well prepared. The general 
practice abroad is to sow the seed in beds, as beet or onion beds 
are prepared with us. The Germans speak of the seedlings 
while in the nursery beds as "in the school," and this phrase 
happily suggests how they should be treated. The aim is here 
to start, harden, and root the young plants in a small area 
where they can be sheltered with brush or otherwise from the 
scorching sun, and watered if need be in case of drought. 

If the seedlings are to be put out close by the garden, they 
may be planted direct from the mother bed at the end of one or 
two years. But when they are to be removed to any distance 
or planted as forests, they should be transplanted at the end 
of the first or second year and planted for forests one year 
later. The larch and Scotch pine are usually planted perma- 
nently, two years from sowing in beds and one year from the 
planting, that is three years from the seed. The direction 
is constantly repeated to let the trees grow up very thickly for 
a few years^ as they will at first thin themselves on the 
theory of the survival of the fittest, and after the fifth year 
the value of the poles will pay for the further thinning re- 
quired. When planted, the rows should not be more than 
three feet apart, and the plants stand two feet apart in the 
rows, giving some seven thousand to the acre, varying with the 
kind of trees. At the outset the trees are planted more thickly 
in Europe than in America. 

Will it pay the average farmer of Connecticut to plant 
trees ? Certainly not if early profit is essential. The answer 
depends on various circumstances, such as the size of one's 
farm, its soil and situation. But in an ordinary Connecticut 
farm of from sixty to one hundred acres and upwards, I answer 
yes. If you are looking ahead and seeking an investment for 
future profit, " trees will make dollars, for they will grow in 
waste places where nothing else can be profitably cultivated. 
A soil too thin and rough for cereals may be favorable for 
trees. Hillsides and plains exhausted and worn out by the 
plow have often been reclaimed by planting forests. Ravines 
too steep for cultivation are the favorite seats of timber, and 



13 



whereyer a crevice is found in a rocky ledge, the root of a tree 
will burrow and spread, taking a hold so firm as to defy the 
storm, and acting mechanically to disintegrate the rock and 
change its constituent elements into useful products. By the 
road-side, the river-bank, along the brook, and on the over- 
hanging cliff, a tree may be alwaji earning wealth for its 
owners, both in our densest settlements and in the waste 
places of our most valuable lands." In no way can we ulti- 
mately enrich Connecticut more than by planting the choicest 
trees on our exhausted and unproductive lands. In such situ- 
ations forests will yield a large percentage of profit. This is 
a duty we owe to ourselves and to our children. 

In many positions forests are of great service as wind-breaks ; 
even narrow strips of trees afford a neeidful shelter to fruit trees 
and to various crops, as well as a shield to cattle from piercing 
winds. Evergreens serve best for screens, as deciduous trees 
are leafless when their shelter is most needed, especially for 
stock and around farm buildings. The evergreens most suit- 
able for this purpose are the Norway spruce, white pine, Scotch 
pine, and Austrian pine ; and next to these are the American 
arbor vitse, hemlock, and spruce. Sheltered orchards are 
most productive and less likely to lose their fruit prematurely 
by violent winds, and the farmer with proper wind-screens 
consumes less fuel in his house and less forage in his stables. 
Stated in the order of their obvious advantage to individual 
farmers, the benefits of tree-planting would be, first, direct 
profit in timber and fuel ; second, the reclamation of waste 
land ; third, shelter ; fourth, climatic gain and hygienic influ- 
ence ; and fifth, ornamentation. 

The climatic influence of forests has been of late the subject 
of extensive investigation in Europe, and much evidence gath- 
ered showing that forest denudation may result in detriment 
to the health and welfare of a community. Tlie influence of 
forests on rainfall, climate, and water supply, has been freely 
discussed in the schools of forestry and in scientific circles. 
It is not proved that extensive denudation will cause a marked 
decrease in the total rainfall of any large country. Wliile this 
is still an unsettled question, recent observations in France, 



14 



made with great care and complete sets of instruments at 
different stations, seem to establish the facts, first, that 
throughout the year six per cent, more rain falls in the forests 
than in the open fields ; second, that of the total rainfall ten 
per cent, in the forest is caught by the leaves and reaches the 
earth very gradually, or not at all ; and, third, that the evap- 
oration in the open country is five times as great as in a 
forest. 

But on the question of the influence of forests on climate 
and the permanent water supply, there is a growing unanimity 
among practical foresters and professors in the forest schools 
of Europe. Their theories and observations plainly show 
that the wholesale clearing of forests has an injurious effect 
on both, while the extensive planting of trees on arid regions 
has ameliorated the climate, prevented mountain torrents, and 
rendered the water supply more permanent. These investi- 
gations show that the general destruction of forests has ren- 
dered the climate dryer, more changeable and trying, and that 
forests on the one hand tend to lower the general temperature 
of a country and promote the fall of rain at more i-egular in- 
tervals, and on the other hand they ward off sudden meteor- 
ological changes which result in heavy falls of rain and 
disastrous floods. 

It is well known that houses too closely surrounded by trees 
are damp. Beautiful and healthful as shade trees are, they 
may stand too near the house. Dense evergreens growing so 
close as to shut out all sunlight, are harmful. It is an old 
Italian proverb, that " where the sunlight cannot come the 
doctor must;" and sometimes the wisest direction of the 
physician to his rheumatic patient is, to cut down the tree 
which too densely overshadows the house and excludes all 
sunlight. The wetness of roads completely overshadowed by 
trees, shows how forests affect the humidity of the ground 
they cover. Mr. Marsh says : " One important conclusion at 
least is certain and undisputed, that within their own limits 
and near their own borders forests maintain a more uniform 
degree of humidity in the atmosphere than is observed in 
cleared grounds." Speaking of the indiscriminate clearing in 



15 



America, he says : " with the disappearance of the forest, all 
is changed. At one season, the earth parts with its warmth 
hy radiation to an open sky, and at another receives heat 
from the unobstructed rays of the sun ; hence the climate be- 
comes excessive, and the soil is alternately parched by the 
fervor of summer and seared by the rigors of winter." 

Wm. Cullen Bryant says : " Our summers are becoming dryer 
and our streams smaller. Take the Cuyahoga as an illustra- 
tion. Fifty years ago large barges loaded with goods went up 
and down that river. Now, in an ordinary stage of the water, 
a canoe or skiff can hardly pass down the stream. And from 
the same cause— the destruction of our forests — other streams 
are drying up in summer." Almost every work on forestry 
abounds in evidence that extensive forest denudation has 
everywhere diminished the flow of springs. The case of the 
famous spring in the Island of Ascension is often cited, which 
dried up when the adjacent mountain was cleared, but reap- 
peared in a few years after the wood was replanted. Several 
lakes in Switzerland showed a depression of their level after a 
general devastation of the forests. Siemoni says : In a rocky 
nook in the Tuscan Apennines there flowed a perennial stream 
from three adjacent springs. On the disappearance of the 
woods around and above the springs the stream ceased, except 
in rainy weather, but when a new growth of wood again shaded 
the soil, the springs began to flow." Marchand says : " The 
river that from time immemorial furnished ample water-power 
for the factory at St. Ursanne dwindled so much when the sur- 
rounding woods were cut that the factory was at last obliged to 
stop altogether." President Chadbourne says that Salt Lake 
contains nearly twice as much water as it did when the Mor- 
mons came, and that the water supply is increasing throughout 
the territory, not by an increase of rain, but cultivation 
and extensive groves of trees have checked the influence of 
drying winds and lessened evaporation.'* 

* Near my residence (Woburn, Massachusetts,) there is a pond upon which 
mills have been standing since the early settlement of the town. These have 
been kept in constant operation until within thirty years, when the supply of 
water began to fail. The pond owes its existence to a stream which has its 
source in the hills stretching some miles to the south. Within the time mentioned, 



16 



I visited the planted forests of the Duke of Athole— -v/hose 
estates, beginning near Dunkeld in Scotland, extend forty 
miles by ten — in company with Captain Campbell Walker, 
now the Conservator of State Forests in New Zealand, 
who was long employed in the same service in India. He 
said he had personally observed the drying up of springs and 
decrease of the average amount of water in some of the 
mountain forests in India, in which extensive clearing had 
taken place, and that such clearing had unquestionably less- 
ened the regular supply for springs and permanent flow in 
the streams and rivers. While I was in England, the terrible 
famine in India resulting in the starvation of over seven 
hundred and fifty thousand people — more than the entire 
population of Connecticut and Rhode Island — was a promi- 
nent theme of public thought and talk and sympathy. Cap- 
tain Walker, Dr. J. C. Brown, and other foresters expressed 
the view that forest denudation, diminishing the springs and 
lessening the former sources of artificial irrigation, was the 
leading cause of this terrible calamity. Under the early rule 
of the East India Company, there was a wide-spread devasta- 
tion of the forests, and in later years the construction of 
extensive railway and telegraph lines have created a new 
demand for timber. Eecently the English Government has 
adopted energetic measures for re-foresting the mountains, 
and placed the remaining forests under the supervision of 
competent foresters. 

In a paper read to the Vienna Geographical Society in 
1875, Herr Wex, Counsellor of State, and Director of the 
Government Works for the regulation of the flow of the 
Danube, affirms that in the last fifty years the decrease in 
the average level or comparison of the highest and lowest 
flow of the Elbe and Oder has been seventeen inches, the 
Rhine twenty-four, Vistula twenty -six, Danube at Orsova, fifty- 
five. These measurements, embracing the greatest flood 

these hills, which were clothed with a dense forest, have been stripped of trees, 
and what was never heard of before, the stream itself has been entirely dry. 
Within the last ten years a new growth of wood has sprung up on the land 
formerly occupied by the old forest, and now the water runs through the year. 
Dk. Piper — Trees of America. 



17 



heights, the lowest flow, and the medium average flow, show 
that the floods are unquestionably higher than in former 
years, and the contrast between the highest and lowest flow 
is greater, and that these higher floods are no compensation 
for the diminution of the medium and low flood, and that many 
manufactories built during the last fifty years have experi- 
enced a marked diminution in the water supply of their 
streams, and steam-engines have been employed to meet the 
deficiency of water-power, once ample to do the same work. 

The cause of this remarkable phenomena lies in the exten- 
sive clearing away of the forests, especially in the mountains, 
where deluges of rain occur more frequently ; for, in lands 
devoid of trees, the rain water sinks less ii^to the soil, 
but more speedily reaches the brooks, streams, and rivers, 
and fills and overflows these water-courses, and results 
in disastrous floods. The correctness of this conclusion is 
sadly attested by the now frequently recurring inundations in 
Italy, in the south of France, Hungary, Bohemia, and in 
many other lands. It may be worthy of inquiry whether the 
general clearing of the mountain forests around Salisbury, 
Connecticut, to meet the growing demand for charcoal for the 
furnaces, had any connection with the desolating flood which 
occurred in that town four years ago. A resident of Salis- 
bury, whose farm lies near the base of the mountain skirting 
that town, says that a stream on his land, formerly never fail- 
ing, has dried up every summer for the last twenty years. 

By several learned societies — like the Royal Academy of Sci- 
ence of Vienna, and the Imperial Academy of Science of St. 
Petersburg — commissioners were appointed to report upon the 
paper of Wex, and their reports substantially confirm his 
views, and say : "Forests exercise a beneficial influence which 
can hardly be estimated too highly in an increased humidity 
of the air, a reduction of the extremes of temperature, a 
diminution of evaporation, and a more regular distribution of 
the rainfall, while the injurious effects of their destruction is 
seen in an alternation of periods of drought at one time with 
wasting floods at another." The forests serve as storehouses 
of moisture, both from their leafy canopy which shuts out the 

2 



18 



sun, and the myriads, or rather millions, of leaves covering 
the soil and acting like a sponge, soaking up and retaining the 
rain and regulating its distribution, while the roots act as ver- 
tical drains, favoring infiltration and promoting the descent of 
the water into the lower strata of the earth, there to nourish 
the springs. 

Among the works of Dr. J. C. Brown on Forestry — the 
most voluminous writer on this subject in the English lan- 
guage — is one on " Rehoisement in France," or the replanting 
of the Alps, the Cevennes, and the Pyrenees, to arrest and 
prevent the destructive consequences of torrents. He clearly 
shows from official documents what fearful inundations 
resulted from the over-clearing of forests, and describes the 
remedial measures now in progress, which are to extend 
through many years and to cost over twelve millions of francs. 
But the loss of property by the terrible inundations in the 
south of France in 1875 was estimated by the government at 
seventy-five millions of francs, besides the loss of over three 
thousand lives. This was the work of a single year. The 
sad lessons of other torrents and other years have now at 
length led to systematic efforts to re-clothe their mountains. 

The benefits that may accrue to our country from the dis- 
cussion of tree-planting, were strikingly exhibited two hundred 
and fourteen years ago, when Sir John Evelyn published his 
celebrated work, entitled, " Sylva ; or, a Discourse on Forest 
Trees and the Propagation of Timber." It was at once received 
with great public favor, and honored with royal commendation. 
He had remarkable success in awakening general interest in • 
sylviculture. It was written while he was employed in an 
entirely different branch of public service, but, as he says, 
" from an earnest desire to support the credit of the Royal 
Society, and to convince the world that philosophy was not 
barely an amusement, fit only to employ the time of melan- 
choly and speculative people, but a high and useful science, 
worthy the attention of men of the greatest parts, and capable 
of contributing in a supreme degree to the welfare of the 
nation." He was one of the founders of the Boyal Society, 
and wrote this book at its special request, and that society 



19 



has originated few books in the last two hundred years more 
useful than this which still survives in its grand results, 
although his other works on painting, sculpture, architecture, 
and medals have long since been forgotten. In many ways 
England has recognized her great obligations to the man who 
worked so lovingly and effectively for the good of his country- 
men. 

Disraeli, in his " Curiosities of Literature," fittingly says : 
"Had Evelyn only composed the great work of his Sylva, 
his name would have excited the gratitude of posterity. The 
voice of the patriot exults in the dedication to Charles II, 
prefixed to one of the later editions, in which he says : * I 
need not acquaint your Majesty how many millions of timber 
trees, besides infinite others, have been planted throughout 
your vast dominions at the instigation of this work, because 
your Majesty has been pleased to own it publicly for my 
encouragement.' Surely, while Britain retains her situa- 
tion among the nations of Europe, the Sylva of Evelyn will 
endure with her triumphant oaks. It was a retired philoso- 
pher who aroused the genius of the nation, and who, casting 
a prophetic eye towards the age in which we live, contributed 
to secure our sovereignty of the seas. The present navy of 
Great Britain has been constructed with the oaks which the 
genius of John Evelyn planted." 

What trees shall we plant in Connecticut? One of the 
most valuable of our native trees is the white ash, and, all 
things considered, it is one of the most profitable for planting. 
Combining lightness, strength, toughness, elasticity, and 
beauty of grain in a rare degree, it is in great and growing 
demand for farming tools, furniture, interior finishing of 
houses and railroad cars, the construction of carriages, 
for oars and pulley-blocks, and many other purposes. The 
excellence of our ash is one secret of the preference given 
abroad to American agricultural implements. It is hardy, 
will bear the bleakest exposure, is a rapid grower, and attains 
large size, but will not thrive on poor lands. It is every way 
superior to the European ash, much as that has been cultivated 
and lauded abroad. It is now found widely in the nurseries 



20 



and young plantations attached to the forest schools of 
Europe. Director-General Adolfo Di Bdranger, President of 
the Royal Instituto Forestale at Yallombrosa, pointed me to 
his plantations of Fraxinus Americana with a tone which 
implied that is the tree of which Americans may well be 
proud. 

The ash is a fine ornamental tree for private grounds, 
public parks, or for the way-side. When planted closely 
for timber they grow straight and free from low laterals, 
and early reach a size that makes the thinnings valuable 
for poles and fencing. Mr. Budd, a tree grower of Iowa, says : 
''A grove of ten acres thinned to six feet apart, containing 
twelve thousand trees, at twelve years were eight inches in 
diameter and thirty-five feet high, the previous thinning pay- 
ing all expenses of planting and cultivation. Ten feet of the 
bodies of these trees were worth, for making bent stuff, etc., 
forty cents each, and the remaining top ten cents, making a 
total of $6,000 as the profit of ten acres in twelve years, or a 
yearly profit of $50 per acre." Mr. Edward Norton of Farm- 
ington has about sixteen thousand white ash plants, raised 
from last year's seed, now in rows to be planted next spring. 
They are very thrifty, and average about one foot in height. 
Very few of them died during the summer. He has gathered 
seed enough for about one hundred thousand plants, which he 
intends to start next spring. 

The seeds of the ash are abundant, ripening by the first 
of October. They may be easily gathered after the first 
frost. If sown in the fall they should be covered with 
three inches of straw. If to be sown in the spring the seed 
may be mixed with damp sand. With all seedlings care 
should be taken to keep down the weeds. In some of 
the^ nurseries connected with the forest schools, I noticed 
the seed-beds were protected by green bushes during 
the hottest and dryest part of the summer. For field planting, 
the land should be plowed and made mellow in the autumn, 
that the trees may be planted early in the spring. A little 
over five thousand plants will be required to the acre, where 
they are set in rows four feet apart, and two feet apart in the 



21 

rows. The weeds can be kept down for tliree years with a 
cultivator, when the ground will be sufficiently shaded to 
require no further cultivation. 

Connecticut is rich in its variety of native trees, having 
nearly sixty species, of which about forty are sizable for tim- 
ber. Among the native trees worthy of cultivation may be 
named the white ash, white oak, sugar maple, chestnut, hick- 
ory, butternut, white pine, willow, and the elm. The latter, 
when growing under favoring conditions, has been pronounced 
''the most magnificent vegetable of the temperate zone." 
Much as the willow has been used as an ornamental tree, its 
economic value has not been appreciated in this country. The 
white willow is especially commended by experienced arborists. 
While most at home in low grounds and beside streams, it is 
hardy and will grow, though not as thriftily, on dry uplands 
and in poor soils. Professor William H. Brewer says: ''In 
England, where it is often sixty or seventy feet high in twenty 
years, there is no wood in greater demand than good willow. 
It is light, very tough, soft, takes a good finish, w^ill bear more 
pounding and knocks than any other wood grown there, and 
hence its use for cricket bats, for floats to paddle-wheels of 
steamers, and brake-blocks on cars. It is used extensively for 
turning, planking coasting vessels, furniture, ox-yokes, wooden 
legs, shoe-lasts, etc. Its charcoal is used for making gun- 
powder, its bark for tanning, its sprouts for withes and bas- 
kets. In some sections of Europe it has been planted from 
remote times as one of their most valued trees." Starting 
from cuttings and growing rapidly it can be very easily prop- 
agated. Fuller says: " It groweth incredibly fast — it being a 
by-word that the profit by willows will buy the owner a horse 
before that by other trees will pay for the saddle." Mr. Sar- 
gent says: "As willow timber could be produced far more 
cheaply than that of any of our native trees, it should soon 
come into general use here for the purposes requiring light- 
ness, pliancy, elasticity, and toughness — qualities which it 
possesses in an eminent degree, and for which more valuable 
woods are now employed. Less than one-third of the willow 
used in the United States for basket making is produced here^ 



22 



the remainder being imported from Great Britain, France, 
Holland, and Belgium, at an annual cost of five millions of 
dollars. The osier proper, the product of Salix viminalis and 
its allies, can be grown without trouble in any wet, undrained 
soil, capable of producing little else of value ; but the better 
sorts of basket willow are only successfully produced with 
careful cultivation on rich, well-drained soil. Under such 
conditions it is a profitable crop, capable of netting at least 
SloO a year to the acre, and well worth the attention of our 
farmers." The experiment of raising willows is worth trying, 
though I do not anticipate so large profits as Professor Sar- 
gent promises. 

For the reclamation of our pastures and waste lands aban- 
doned to hard-hack, sumac, and other worthless brush, the 
European larch deserves to become a favorite. A native of 
the Alps, Apennines, of the Tyrol and Carpathian Mountains, 
it is a very hardy tree, and at home in a variety of well- 
drained soils, especially on rough, rocky, or gravelly ground, 
and the most rugged ravines. There are in our State large 
tracts of bleak hill-sides and mountain declivities or summits, 
now practically worthless, where the larch, thickly planted, 
would soon choke out brush, weeds, and grasses. As an orna- 
mental tree it grows finely even in deep and rich loam, but its 
extraordinary qualities for timber may be impaired when 
grown on the rich prairies of the West or the best lands of 
the East. When raised under right conditions it combines 
the two qualities of rapidity of growth and durability of wood 
more than any other tree. This wood was in high favor with 
the Romans for the building of ships and bridges. Julius 
Caesar spoke strongly of its strength and durability. 

Last summer I heard a lumber-man in Venice say that its 
durability was amply attested there, as most of the houses of 
the city are built upon larch piles, many of which, though in 
use for centuries, show no signs of decay. In a large Doge's 
palace, now used as a hotel, he showed me some very ancient 
larch window-casings which are still sound. For gondola 
posts in the canals adjoining the houses the larch is preferred. 
In wharves and many other positions in England where there 



23 



is an alternation of wci and dry with the tide, the larch has 
stood this most trying test far better than oak. In England 
it is regarded as the best timber for railway ties. Monville 
says: "In Switzerland, the larch, as the most durable of 
woods, is preferred for shingles, fences, and vine-props. These 
vine-props remain fixed for years, and see crop after crop of 
vines bear their fruit and perish without showing any symp- 
toms of decay. Props of silver fir would not last more than 
ten years." Evelyn says: "It makes everlasting spouts and 
pent-houses, which need neither pitch nor painting to preserve 
them." Michie affirms that " For out-door work it is the most 
durable of all descriptions of wood. I have known larch posts 
that have stood for nearly fifty years." Professor Sargent 
expresses the opinion that "For posts it will equal in dura- 
bility our red cedar, while in the power to hold nails it is 
greatly its superior." The chestnut railway sleeper loses its 
power to hold iron in about seven years, though the tie itself 
may not so soon seriously rot. The larch, while it holds iron 
as firmly as oak, unlike the latter, does not corrode iron. 

The Boston & Albany Railway have larch ties in use for six- 
teen years which are still sound. The president of the Illinois 
Central Railway, having examined the vast planted forests of 
larch in Europe and learned its remarkable fitness for railway 
ties, ofiers to transport the young plants free of charge to any 
point on their lines or leased lines, provided they are to be 
planted in the vicinity of the same. It is, however, an experi- 
ment which time alone can determine, whether the larch will 
retain its durability when planted in the level, deep, vegetable 
mould of the prairies, with their retentive sub-soil. That it 
will grow there rapidly and luxuriantly is amply proved, but 
its history for many centuries shows that elevated lands suit 
it better than low grounds, and side-hills and mountain slopes 
better than flats. In the rich river flats of Kew Gardens and 
in the vicinity of London the larch does not thrive. The 
specimens found in that remarkable collection of all known 
trees are puny. The Kew arborist informed me that in the 
two hundred and seventy acres appropriated to the arboretum, 
no spot had been found suited to the larch. Mr. James Brown, 



24 



an experienced forester of Scotland, attributes the disease, 
which has of late prevailed in many larch plantations in that 
country, to planting it, both in the nursery and the field, in 
uncongenial soil. 

No other tree has been planted so extensively in Scotland. 
It attains maturity long before the oak, and serves well for 
nearly all purposes for which oak is used. Larch trees thirty 
years old are sometimes sold for fifteen dollars each, while 
oaks of the same age are not worth three dollars each. 
According to Newlands the strength of larch timber is to that 
of British oak as 103 to 100 ; its stiffness as 79 to 100 ; while 
its toughness is as 134 to 100. As the larch grows erect, with 
short and slender laterals, it may be planted much thicker 
than the oak. According to Loudon ten acres of larch will 
furnish as much ship timber as seventy-five acres of oak. Its 
large timber yield per acre is one source of its popularity in 
Britain. It was first planted on the estate of the Duke of 
Athole, in 1741. Some stately specimens over one hundred 
and thirty years old may be seen near the cathedral at Dun- 
keld. Mr. McGregor, the duke's forester, informed me that 
on this one estate have been planted over twenty-seven millions 
of larch trees, covering over sixteen thousand acres, some of 
which was formerly worth only from one to two shillings per 
acre. 

Dr. James Brown says he has seen matured crops of larch of 
sixty-five years' standing sold for from $750 to $2,000 per acre, 
when the land was originally worth only from $2 to $4 per 
acre. Mr. Sargent, director of the Botanic Garden and 
Arboretum of Harvard College, gives a detailed estimate of 
the profits of a plantation of European larch of ten acres to 
last fifty years, calculating the cost for land, fencing, plants, 
labor, taxes, and interest, and makes the net gain to be 
$52,282.75, or about thirteen per cent, per annum for the 
entire fifty years, after retaining the original capital, and he 
adds: "There are in Massachusetts fully 200,000 acres of 
unimproved land which could, with advantage, be at once 
covered with larch plantations, and if so planted their net 
yield, according to my estimate, in fifty years would be 



25 



$1,045,660,000. Supposing that these 200,000 acres will, in 
the natural course of events, produce, during the same time, 
one hundred cords of fire-wood to the acre, worth six dollars 
a cord, amounting to $120,000,000, and subtracting this sum 
from the net yield of the larch, we have left, as created wealth, 
the respectable sum of 1925,000,000." 

Mr. Sargent, however, admits that this is farming on paper, 
and that considerable allowances should be made for such 
contingencies as fire, tree diseases, insect attacks, and other 
dangers now unforeseen. Robert Douglas of Illinois, who has 
had far more experience in larch planting than any other 
American^ writes me that the larch in this country is remark- 
ably free from all disease and insect depredations. 

My special aim has been to encourage the recuperation of 
sterile lands by tree planting. The experiments of thus 
reclaiming barren tracts, which have been tried on a large 
scale in many European countries, prove the superiority of the 
larch for this purpose over all other evergreens, because it is 
deciduous. Grigor says: " No tree is so valuable as the larch 
in its fertilizing effects, arising from the richness of its foliage, 
which it sheds annually. The yearly deposit is very great ; 
the leaves remain and are consumed on the spot where they 
drop." Trees also enrich the soil by a curious chemistry 
which disintegrates even the rocks, and transmutes their par- 
ticles into forms of life and beauty. The radicles and rootlets, 
in their underground laboratory, secrete acids which dissolve 
the very sands and stones. 

The frequency of forest fires is urged as an objection to 
tree-planting. Here is a real discouragement ; but forests are 
no more likely to be burned than are our barns and dwellings. 
More property is consumed every year by the burning of 
stores and houses in this country than by forest fires. This 
danger, therefore, should no more prevent tree-planting than 
house-building. But such views need to be spread among all 
classes of the American people as will produce the general 
conviction that the interests of all classes are concerned in 
the protection and conservation of forests. The schools of 
forestry have made this sentiment wellnigh universal in 



26 



Germany, and all classes there appreciate their value and the 
need of protecting them. Browsing and pasturage in certain 
limits are prohibited, and yet the forests are not fenced. Simple 
marks designate where cattle may pasture and where they 
may not, and an intelligent public sentiment is a better 
guardian of the national or communal forests than of&cial 
watchers or national police. 

In some portions of Germany the law formerly required 
every landholder to plant trees along his road frontage. 
Happy would it be for us if the sovereigns of our soil would 
make each such a law for himself. Happy, also, if the law 
of usage, fashion, or interest here, as did the civil law there, 
required that every young man before he married should 
plant a tree. In some of our Western States tree-planting 
by the road-side is encouraged by a bounty from the State 
treasury, and in the fields by both a bounty and exemption 
from taxation for a term of years. The law in Minnesota 
provides that " every person planting, protecting and cultiva- 
ting forest trees for three years, one-half mile or more along 
any public highway, shall be entitled to receive for ten years 
thereafter an annual bounty of two dollars for each half-mile 
so planted and cultivated, to be paid out of the State treasury ; 
but such bounty shall not be paid any longer than such line 
of trees is maintained." If I may be pardoned for repeating 
a personal allusion, the maples which I planted, when a mere 
boy, before the old homestead in Litchfield county, are now 
beautiful and stately trees. As I have often said, they have paid 
me a thousand-fold for the work they cost, and added new 
charms to that beautiful spot, to which I count it a privilege 
to make an annual visit. Among the memories of my boy- 
hood, no day has recurred with such frequency and satisfaction 
as that then devoted to tree-planting. My interest in the 
subject is due to this incident (or perhaps accident) of my 
boyhood. I should be thankful if I could help put a similar 
incident, and an equally grateful experience, into the child- 
hood of our boys of to-day. In this good work may I earn- 
estly bespeak the cooperation of the farmers of Connecticut. 

In tree-planting, the economic and ornamental touch at so 



2T 



many points that tlie cases are rare where they really diverge. 
Nothing, for example, can add so much to the beauty and 
attractiveness of our country roads as long avenues of fine 
trees. I saw this beautifully illustrated in France, last sum- 
mer, where, for over a hundred miles on a stretch, the road 
was lined with trees. In many ways the first Napoleon's inter- 
est in arboriculture proved a benefaction to France. No time 
should be lost in securing the same grand attraction to the 
highways of Connecticut. Growing on land otherwise running 
to waste, such trees would yield most satisfactory returns. 
The shade and beauty would be grateful to every traveler, 
but doubly so to the owner and the planter, as the happy 
experience of many Connecticut farmers can testify. A 
grand work in this direction is already well started. No 
class can contribute so much to the adornment of our public 
roads as the farmers. They have already in abundance the 
very best trees for the roadside, such as the elm, maple, ash, 
American linden (or bass), oak, and in some localities the 
walnut. The hard maple will thrive in dry and gravelly soils, 
while the elm and red maple are specially desirable for moist, 
low ground. As the maples should be planted twenty-five 
feet apart, and the elms from forty to fifty, poplars or willows 
or trees growing rapidly from scions, may be placed between, 
to be cut down when their statelier neighbors require the 
room for their full development. 

Tree-planting is fitted to give a needful lesson of forethought 
to the juvenile mind. Living only in the present and for the 
present, too often youth will sow only where they can quickly 
reap. A meager crop soon in hand, outweighs a golden 
harvest long in maturing. Youth should learn to forecast 
the future as the condition of wisdom. Arboriculture is a 
discipline in foresight — it is always planting for the future, 
and sometimes for the distant future. Says Washington Irv- 
ing, " There is something nobly simple and pure in such a 
taste for trees. It argues a sweet and generous nature to 
have this strong friendship for the hardy and glorious sons of 
the forest. There is a serene majesty in woodland scenery 
that enters into the soul, dilates and elevates it, and fills it 



28 



with noble inclinations. There is a grandeur of thought 
connected with this heroic line of husbandry. It is worthy 
of liberal and free-born and aspiring men. He who plants 
an oak, looks forward to future ages and plants for posterity. 
He cannot expect to enjoy its shelter, but he exults in the 
idea that the acorn which he has buried in the earth shall 
grow up into a lofty pile, and shall keep on flourishing and 
increasing and benefiting mankind long after he has ceased 
to tread his paternal fields." It was the trees of his own 
planting at Sunny side-on-the-Hud son, more than the beauty 
of the surrounding landscape, that led Irving to say, " After 
all my wanderings, I return to this spot with a heartfelt 
preference for it over all others in the world." It was the 
simple beauty he had created at Marslifield, — the grassy 
lawns, the shaded approaches, the hundreds of trees of his 
planting, — that bound Daniel Webster so strongly to that 
sequestered spot. The charm of Abbotsford, the grand Mecca 
of Scotland, comes mainly from its beautiful ivy and shrub- 
bery and the thousands of trees planted by the hand of its 
illustrious proprietor. Says Sir Walter Scott, My heart 
clings to this place I have created. There is scarce a tree in 
it that does not owe its being to me. Once well planted, a 
tree will grow when you are sleeping, and it is almost the 
only thing that needs no tending." 

Any wealthy citizens of Connecticut, who desire to become 
public benefactors, can hardly find a more inviting field for 
their liberality than by offering prizes for sylviculture. A 
few thousand dollars placed in the hands of the Connecticut 
Board of Agriculture would widely stimulate tree-planting, 
and greatly enrich the State. The Massachusetts Society for 
Promoting Agriculture, offer three thousand dollars in the 
following prizes : 

First. For the best plantation of not less than five acres, 
$1,000 ; for the next best, 1600 ; and for the next best, $400. 
For these prizes the European larch must be planted, except 
in Barnstable, Dukes, and Nantucket counties, where the 
Scotch pine or Corsican pine must be used, as best adapted 
to sandy plains. Only plantations made on poor, worn-out 



29 



land, or that which is unfit for agricultural purposes, and 
containing at least 2,700 trees to the acre, can compete for 
these prizes. 

Second. For the best plantation of American white ash, of 
not less than five acres in extent, |600 ; for the next best, 
$400. Plantations originally of less than 5,000 trees to the 
acre, cannot compete for these prizes. 

The following directions for tree-planting are condensed 
from the recommendations given by the trustees of the prize 
fund. For planting larch and pine, shallow furrows four feet 
apart should be run one way across the field. Then by plant- 
ing in the furrows four feet apart each way, 2,720 plants will be 
required to the acre. On hilly, rocky land which cannot be 
plowed, it will be only necessary to open with a spade, holes 
large enough to admit the roots of the plants. The larch 
must he planted as early in the seasoji as the ground can he 
worked. No other tree begins to grow so early, and too late 
planting is a common cause of failure. The Scotch and Cor- 
sican pines can be planted up to the first of May. The roots 
should be exposed to the wind and sun as little as possible. 
Carelessness in this particular is often fatal to the young 
plants. The trees should be carried to the field in bundles, 
covered with wet mats, and not be removed till they are re- 
quired for planting. The roots should be carefully spread 
out in the holes or furrows prepared for them, and the soil 
worked among them with the hand, and finally pressed down 
with the foot. A cloudy or rainy day is especially favorable 
for this work. All young plantations must he protectedj from 
browsing animals, the greatest enemies, next to man, to young 
trees and the spread of forest growth. 

If the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad reclaim 
the strip of land bordering their line through the " sand-blow," 
the example would be a benefaction to the State as a demon- 
stration of what may be accomplished under the most un- 
favorable circumstances. If that desert can be reclaimed, 
surely all other barrens in Connecticut may be fertilized by 
forests. This enterprise will require time, faith, patience, 
and money. For the first four years the young trees may seem 



80 



to barely struggle between life and death, after which thej 
are likely to grow rapidly. As this scheme will be regarded 
as chimerical by those who have not investigated the subject, 
I give below extracts from letters which I have received from 
practical tree-planters on Cape Cod and elsewhere, embody- 
ing interesting facts and practical suggestions. 

John Doane, Orleans. (Mr. Doane, now eighty-six years of age, is the oldest 
living sylviculturist in Barnstable County.) I have planted one hundred acres 
in Orleans and seventy in Brewster. The whole plantation in Orleans is about 
five hundred acres ; in Eastham seven hundred acres ; in Wellfleet four hundred ; 
in Truro six hundred ; in Chatham, Harwich, Dennis, and Yarmouth, about four 
hundred each; and in Barnstablesix hundred acres. In regard to the other towns 
on Cape Cod I have no definite information, though trees have been planted in many 
towns on the Cape. I have made a machine for planting the seed, that I have 
lent to the tree-planters in five of the neighboring towns. The land I have 
planted with pines was not worth over fifty cents per acre before planting, and I 
have sold some since covered with young pines, for fourteen dollars per acre. I 
consider it a good investment. 

Jolin Kenrich, South Orleans.- -My experiments in tree-planting have been 
made on over a hundred acres now covered with trees from one to thirty-five 
years old, chiefly pitch pine. I am now trying Scotch and Corsican pine, and 
European larch. My first aim has been to cover my worn-out lands with beauty 
and verdure, and it has proved a successful and economic experiment. The seed 
of the pitch pine is worth from one to two dollars a pound, the higher price 
being in the end tiie cheapest. Fresh seeds, carefully gathered, are as sure to 
vegetate as corn, but obtained from seedsmen, they are very unreliable in germi- 
nating. Euro]}ean nurserymen take far greater pains in gathering forest tree 
seeds, and understand the art of curing them better than Americans. I have 
tried every method of tree -plan ting, transplanting trees from the smallest to 
those that are two feet high. This is a costly plan, but may be adopted when 
one wishes to save time, and desires a few trees as a wind break or otherwise. In 
transplanting trees immediately from my own nursery to the field, my favorite 
time is just as the buds begin to start in the spring. I have planted seeds both 
with a planter and by hand. On our light sands a man and boy will plant three 
acres m a day. Dropping six seeds in a hill, it will take about half a pound of 
seed to the acre. This is my favorite method, and is more satisfactory in results, 
though more costly than that of using the plow and planter. When the ever- 
greens are about two feet high I would thin them, leaving one thrifty plant in 
each hill. I do not trim till they get large, and then cut off only the dead 
branches. 

Tiilly Crosby, Brewster. In our small town about fifteen hundred acres of old 
waste land have been planted with pitch-pine. The Norway pine has not proved 
a success with us. Many old fields bought for fifty cents per acre, and planted 
with pine twenty-five years ago, are now worth from ten to twenty dollars an acre. 
The pines grow well for twenty-five or thirty years, and when cut off a second 
crop springs up immediately, and this crop does better than the first. The pitch- 
pine takes root and grows on our barren beach sand where no soil is perceptible. Our 
people are now planting trees every year. I have recently planted twelve acres. 
Two years ago I cut off a lot planted thirty years since, and the land is now 
full of young pine trees growing from the seed scattered by the first growth. A 
man with a two-horse team can plant ten acres in a day, and three pounds of 
seed will do the whole. 

E. Higgins, Eastham. Thirty years ago twenty acres of condemned tillage 
land, worth one dollar per acre, was planted with pitch pine. The present value 
of this land is fifteen dollars per acre. Prior to 1870, two hundred and twenty- 
five acres more of the same sort of land was thus planted, the present value of 



31 



which is eight dollars per acre. About one hundred and fifty acres of sandy 
land, utterly barren and not worth fifty cents to the acre, have been planted, the 
present value of which is seven dollars per acre. 

John G. Thompson, North Truro. About six hundred and fifty acres have been 
planted in this town. The price of pitch-pine seed for the last few years has been 
one dollar and fifty cents per pound. Thirty years ago land in this town could 
be bought for twenty -five cents per acre for tree-planting ; now the same kind of 
baiTcn land sells for two dollars per acre*for tree-planting. I find the expense 
of planting the pines to be two dollars and twenty-five cents per acre. 

»S. B. Phinney, Barnstable. Large tracts of worn-out lands in this county, that 
were worth comparatively nothing, have been planted from the seed of the pitch- 
pine. These experiments have proved successful. I know of no way in which 
the light sandy lands in this section can be made so valuable as by planting them 
with the pitch-pine. Our experience proves that the cultivation of forest trees is 
feasible and profitable in New England seaport towns. In 1845 I planted in this 
town a ten-acre lot with pitch-pine seed, much as corn is planted, dropping three 
seeds in a hill and covering them with half an inch of soil. To-day many of these 
trees will girth more than a man's body. Hundreds of acres in this section are 
being planted annually. 

J. E. Crane, Bndgewater. The most profitable tree we have planted in this 
region is the white pine, with which about two hundred acres have been planted 
on old worn-out pasture and light sandy soil. The cost of planting, that 
is, setting out young trees twelve to eighteen inches high, is about eight dollars per 
acre. Properly set out, scarcely one in fifty will fail. There is in this vicinity 
an acre that was set out thirty-five years ago, that has just yielded in cash for 
the wood and lumber, $350. On another acre, planted twenty-eight years ago, 
there is estimated to be from eighty to one hundred cords. These are unusual 
specimens, but fifty cords per acre in twenty-five years, is a low estimate on land 
natural to pine, and pine is the most valuable growth of wood in the Old Colony. 

F. CoUamore, Pembroke. Forty years since, Hon. Morrill Allen, " the model 
farmer " of Plymouth county, planted white pines which grew rapidly, and have 
proved very valuable for the manufacture of wooden packing-boxes. His exam- 
ple has been followed to a limited extent. Every one believes in the profit of it, 
but we are in a well-wooded region, and when a lot is cut off it soon starts up 
again. 

Robert Douglas and Sons, Waukegan, Illinois. "We have propagated the Euro- 
pean larch for nearly twenty years. For a number of years, and until the finan- 
cial collapse, we sowed over one thousand pounds of larch seeds annually, averaging 
five to seven thousand plants to the pound of seed. The larch grows finely and 
rapidly in the New England States, in northern Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, and 
Wisconsin. It grows nearly as fast, and makes more durable timber on poor 
lands than on very rich lands. There is no land so poor, except blowing sands, 
but that it will make a rapid growth after it is once fairly established. It is a 
tree adapted to a northern climate, and does not thrive in Kansas, southern Illi- 
nois, and south of Pennsylvania. We are growing the native cherry ( Cerasus 
seratina) in large quantities, as it is healthy, transplants well, grows rapidly on 
land far from rich, and the timber is very valuable. We will send our catalogues, 
giving fuller information, to any party in Connecticut on application. The Euro- 
pean larch should be planted as early as possible in the spring. It should never be 
planted on low wet ground. Set out early, no tree will bear transplanting better. 
Scotch pine and larch do well mixed. We recommend planting a few rows of 
the admixture on the margin of the plantation. When planted four feet by four, 
as we advise, they can be worked both ways with the cultivator for two or three 
years, when the branches will shade the ground so densely as to destroy the 
undergrowth. When the trees are received from the nursery, the boxes should 
be immediately unpacked and the roots dipped into a puddle made of rich, mellow 
soil about the thickness of paint, and kept in a shaded place till ready to plant, 
but the tops should be kept dry. Set the trees a little deeper than they stood in 
the nursery. After treading the earth firmly about the roots, draw a little loose 
earth up to the trees to prevent the surface from baking. 



32 



Francis SJcmner, BrooJcUne, a Trustee of Massachusetts Society for Promoting Agri- 
culture. I will receiye and transmit orders for any number of trees for plantations in 
Connecticut to Douglas & Sons, Waukegan, Illinois. By arrangement with them, 
such orders transmitted through you are subject to fifteen per cent, discount from 
the catalogue prices, and such orders can be transmitted up to April 1st, except 
for European larch, for which the closing time will be March 1st. "We are filling 
our Massachusetts orders from Douglas & Sons in preference to importing from 
England, as they are cheaper when ordered in large quantities, and the chances 
of their success far greater. American white ash, one or two years old and about 
one foot high, are from $3 to $5.50 per thousand ; European larch from ^4 to $8 
per thousand. As this duty is undertaken solely from a desire to facilitate tree- 
planting, and not for the purpose of any personal gain, I cannot be held respon- 
sible in any v;ay for the results. 

A. W. HoUey, Salisbury, Conn. — The consumption of wood in this and sur- 
rounding towns has been very great in supplying charcoal to our numerous iroa 
works. Some of the mountains have been stripped of their trees three times 
within the last century. The second growth was rapid. Each subsequent one 
has been less vigorous and less rapid. Other varieties, aided by artificial means, 
such as seeding, placing cuttings, or transplanting the young trees, might soon 
render our mountains valuable again for the production of forests. Our land- 
owners have not paid sufficient attention to the propagation of trees. The 
denudation of the mountains in Salisbury have lessened our streams. In the 
season of rain there is a more rapid rise and a greater flood than formerly when 
the forests were standing and the foliage and falling limbs lay quietly covering 
the earth beneath. Many smaller streams which flowed continuously through 
the entire season forty or fifty years ago, fail altogether in the summer, and the 
larger ones are proportionately diminished. Your suggestions in regard to fer- 
tilizing our sandy plains are practical, and should be carried out. 

Experiments are now in progress to fix the dunes or sand 
hills which threaten the Suez Canal, by planting the maritime 
pine and other trees. Last summer I visited the celebrated 
forest of Fontainbleau, in France, which covers an area of 
sixty-four square miles. The soil of this wide tract is com- 
posed almost entirely of sand, and apparently as dry as the 
sand plains of Wallingford. Jules Clare, a student of forest 
science of world-wide fame, says : " The sand here forms 
ninety-eight per cent, of the earth, and it is almost without 
water ; it would be a drifting desert but for the trees growing 
and artificially propagated upon it." What has been done 
with signal success at Fontainbleau shows the practicability 
of reclaiming the worst deserts that can be found in our 
State. Many other facts might be cited were it necessary, 
both from home and foreign fields, to prove the feasibility of 
this plan of reclaiming sterile lands. If one is to be com- 
mended who makes two blades of grass grow where but one 
grew before, how much more the farmer who makes forests 
thrive where nothing now grows. 



83 



SCHOOLS OF FOKESTEY. 

The experience of Europe long since demonstrated the value 
and necessity of "Forest Schools" so numerous on the Conti- 
nent. As these institutions are unknown in this country, a 
detailed statement of their aims and character will not only be 
of interest, but I hope, will help towards the organization of 
similar schools in America. In connection with either of our 
Colleges, the endowment of two additional professorships, or 
even one at the outset, might inaugurate a Department of 
Forestry. As the applied mathematics and the sciences com- 
prise so large a part of the curriculum of Forest Schools, a 
Forest Department could very easily and economically be an- 
nexed to the Sheffield Scientific School, where the existing 
cabinets, laboratories and philosophical apparatus could be 
utilized in forestral instruction. The endowment of such a 
department would prove a great benefaction to the State and 
to the country, opening new fields of investigation which would 
bear directly on the ultimate resources and permanent pros- 
perity of the nation. The conclusions of foreign foresters, 
though confirmed by the broadest observations and experience 
in Europe, cannot all be wisely adopted in American Sylvicul- 
ture. Difference in soil, climate and other conditions, may 
affect trees in regard to their rapidity of growth, health, dura- 
bility of timber, texture, elasticity and grain of the wood, and 
many other qualities. These vital questions can be determined 
only by careful investigations carried on in each country. The 
Lombardy poplar, for example, sending out its almost upright 
laterals from the very ground all along its tall stem, grows 
beautifully in Italy, and is still a favorite with the Italians as 
of old with the Romans, who, it is said, gave it the name arhor 
populi. But in New England so many of its branches winter- 
kill that it soon becomes an unsightly collection of dead limbs. 

Another object of my recent visit to the leading schools of 
Forestry in Europe was to gather the practical plans and 
suggestions embodied in my paper on " Economic Tree 
Planting," first published in the Report of the Connecti- 
cut Board of Agriculture, and thus help reclaim our ex- 



84 



hausted lands by tree planting. As these lands have been 
abandoned to hopeless sterility, and their reclamation has 
already been pronounced a visionary and impracticable scheme, 
I have shown that the experiment of reclaiming vast barrens 
in France, Grermany, Russia, Austria and other European 
countries, has been tried with conspicuous success. What 
has been done on so broad a scale and with such grand results 
in Europe surely can be accomplished in the comparatively 
narrow barrens of the 'New England States. 

Another purpose of my journey was to do something 
towards making our youth practical arborists by awaken- 
ing a love of trees and an interest in their study and cul- 
ture. From a wide field of observation, I tried to collect 
such facts as seem fitted to further the work of rural 
adornment, in which encouraging progress has already been 
made in our State. A few oral lessons in our schools on 
rural art, and especially on the beauty, variety and value 
of trees and the ease and ways of their propagation, would 
be as good seed sown in good ground bringing forth fruit an 
hundred fold. Very little time would be required for those 
school talks which would be sure to inspire an interest in the 
study and culture of trees, and in the broader subject of rural 
art and adornment. To all of the teachers of Connecticut in- 
clined to give such instruction in their schools my "Economic 
Tree Planting" will be sent without charge, at least so long as 
the thousand copies printed for that purpose may last. 

The planting of the Syrian Willow, the supply of which fell 
far short of the demand, was designed as a ??2ere beginmng, sure to 
lead to something more and better, and to interest our teachers 
and youth in the broad subject of tree-planting. Beautiful as is 
the weeping willow, I was careful to say " I should greatly pre- 
fer to start five thousand elms or maples if it could be done as 
easily as my five thousand willows seem likely to be stuck in 
the ground." While regretting that so many applicants should 
be disappointed, I urge those who failed to get the willow (and 
I expect the same of all who succeeded), to try the far better 
plan of planting our common but very beautiful white ash or 
elm, maple, white oak, tulip, American linden — or the Scotch 
fir and European larch. I advise our boys also to raise these 



35 



trees from the seed which may be easily gathered every 
autumn. 

The Schools of Forestry have exerted a remarkable influence 
in Grermany in diffusing among the people a general and genu- 
ine interest in arboriculture. They regard forests as their friends, 
and understand their climatic influence and economic value in 
staying spring torrents, preventing summer droughts and sup- 
plying lumber and fuel. The Grermans have a passion for 
nature, and love to frequent their beautiful groves and gardens, 
for parks and woods abound in or near their cities and towns. 
The rural and suburban adornment, now the pride and glory 
of so many beautiful towns in Grermany, and the fruit of this 
revived love of arboriculture, is largely due to the influence and 
literature which have emanated from her Schools of Forestry. 
Hence the wanton forest fires so common and destructive in 
America are comparatively unknown in Germany. The forest 
incendiary would be regarded as a common enemy, like the 
poisoner of an acqueduct, recklessly destroying that which it is 
the interest of all to preserve. The Forest Schools have created 
a healthful public sentiment which constitutes the best possible 
protection of the woods. 

Efforts are now making to organize a Department of Forestry 
in connection with the University and new Arboretum of Edin- 
burgh. Hitherto Forestry has been little taught in England, 
and her young foresters have therefore been educated on the 
Continent. There is a growing conviction of the need of such 
institutions in England, due largely to the able and persistent 
exertions of Kev. J. C. Brown, LL.D., to whom I am indebted for 
many statements given in this paper. The London Journal of 
Forestry says : "The University of Edinburgh possesses remark- 
able facilities for the creation of a School of Forestry, which with 
some slight additions could be easily converted into a thoroughly 
equipped Forest Department, capable of teaching the science of 
Forestry in the most complete and efficient manner.* Sach an 
Institution is one of the greatest wants of the age in this country, 
and no country in the world requires it more. With India, 
Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, not to 
mention numerous smaller dependencies of the British Empire, 

* This language is equally applicable to tlie Sheffield Scientific School and to 
several scientific schools in other States, 



86 



crying out to us to furnish them with thoroughly educated 
foresters, to conserve and restore their fast disappearing forests, 
or to create new ones, it is a standing blot on the institutions 
of our country that we cannot educate and qualify at home 
the men who are needed for this important service. Such 
an institution would be of inestimable value to India and all 
our colonies, and exert a most beneficent influence on the 
management and productiveness of our home forests and the 
rural prosperity of the whole country. The forest wealth of 
Canada is being rapidly exhausted. The great pine forests on 
the Ottawa, St. Maurice and Saguenay rivers, with their won- 
derful net-work of tributary streams, are rapidly disappearing 
beneath the ruthless ax- of the lumberman. All the more 
accessible parts of these great forests are already cleared of pine 
timber. That huge tract of forest between the Ottawa and the 
St. Maurice, which once seemed inexhaustible, is fast disappear- 
ing beneath the destroying ax." 

Dr. Hooker, Director of the Eoyal Gardens at Kew, says : 
" Forestry, a subject so utterly neglected in this country, that 
we are forced to send all candidates for forest appointments to 
France or Grermany for instruction both in theory and prac- 
tice, holds on the Continent an honorable, and even a distin- 
guished place, among the branches of a liberal education. In 
the estimation of the average Briton, forests are of infinitely 
less importance than the game they shelter, and not long since 
the wanton destruction of a fine young tree was considered a 
venial offence compared with snaring a pheasant or rabbit. 
Wherever the English rule extends, with the single exception 
of India, the same apathy prevails. In South Africa, millions 
of acres have been made desert^ and more are being made desert 
annually, through the destruction of the indigenous forests ; 
in Demerara the useful timber trees have all been removed 
from accessible regions, and no thought is given to planting 
others; from Trinidad we have the same story; in New Zea- 
land there is not now a good Kauri pine to be found near the 
coast, and the annals of almost every English colony repeat 
the tale of willful, wanton waste and improvidence. On the 
other hand, in France, Prussia, Switzerland, Austria, Italy and 
Eussia, the forests and waste lands are the subjects of deyoted 



37 



attention on the part of the government, and colleges provided 
with a complete staff of accomplished professors train youths 
of good birth and education to the duties of State foresters. 
Nor, in the case of France, is this law confined to the mother 
country ; the Algerian forests are worked with scrupulous solic- 
itude, and the collection of vegetable produce from the French 
Colonies in the Museum at Paris, shows that their forest pro- 
ducts are all diligently explored/' The above criticism of the 
neglect and inaction of England applies equally to America. 

One of the oldest and best schools of forestry in Europe is 
at ISTancy, a beautiful city of great historic interest, pleasantly 
located on the left bank of the Meurthe, and at the base of a 
long range of wooded and vine-clad hills, about two hundred 
miles east of Paris. The parks and gardens of the city are 
finely adorned with trees and shrubbery. The Department of 
Meurthe, of which it is the capital, owes much of its rare rural 
beauty to the influence of this celebrated school. Forestry 
began to be studied as a science in France during the last 
century, though these investigations were long interrupted by 
the French revolution and the consequent wars. On the 
re-establishment of peace this study was resumed, and the 
School of Forestry was organized at Nancy, which, enlarged 
and more fully equipped, is now liberally supported. The 
cabinets, museums, apparatus and appliances of every sort, 
seemed to me most complete and ample, although the Director 
informed me that their choicest material was already packed 
for the Paris Exposition. Instruction is given gratuitously to 
those who prepare for the State Forest Service, and the 
importance of this service may be inferred from the fact that 
the State forests cover an area of nearly three millions of acres, 
or about the size of Connecticut, with a gross revenue of about 
seven millions of dollars, or deducting all expenses, a net 
revenue of over five millions of dollars. The total expense 
for board, lodging, uniform, instruments and pocket money, is 
from four to five hundred dollars a year. To "foreign stu- 
dents " a moderate charge is added for tuition. I found a 
considerable number of English students in attendance here 
last summer, who are candidates for forest service in India. 

The course occupies three years. The daily work requires ten 



38 



hours, and fifteen hundred hours must be given to study, each half 
year. In the Winter Session, from November 1st to May 1st, 
seventy-five lectures of an hour and a half each are given on 
forest economy, and the same amount of time is allotted for 
preparation of the special topic of each lecture, embracing in 
the course, the exploitation of forests; relation of forests to 
climate; natural history of difierent kinds of trees; manage- 
ment of forests ; conversion of one form of forest into another ; 
and desirable qualities and defects of woods. The same num- 
ber of lectures and the same amount of study are devoted to 
botany — the structure, organs, physiology and geographical 
distribution of plants. Of the seventy-five lectures devoted 
to mathematics, twenty are taken up with land-surveying and 
levelling, fifteen hours are given to the preparation of plans 
under the direction of a professor, twenty-two hours to eleva- 
tions in water-colors, the same time to sketches and descriptions 
of rising grounds and to diagrams and calculations of polygonal 
figures, and also to elevations and designs in hatch work. There 
are also lectures and lessons in road and bridge building, such 
as may be required in the exploitation of forests ; in forest law 
and in the Grerman language, together with some military 
instruction and drill, and practice in horsemanship. 

In the Summer Session, from May to September, thirty-one 
days are spent in botanical and professional excursions in the 
Yosges, the Jura and other mountains, in which are visited 
forests in all stages of treatment and exploitation, and where the 
students are required to practice in the mensuration of wood 
and timber. Six days are allotted to preparing a report of the 
tour of observation and an herbarium of the plants collected. 
Seven days in the field and fifteen hours in the study are 
given to making a diagram with report, full calculations and 
topographical plan, including levels and a reduced drawing of 
the same, and one day in each section of the forest visited to 
a mensuration of a supposed felling and the preparation of an 
official report of it. Five days of work on the ground are 
given to the study of an imaginary projected road, and twenty 
days to making drawings and specifications and estimates 
relating to embankments, consolidating the scarps of ravines, 
building barriers of masonry or fascines across the bed of 



39 



streams, and cutting terraces aloDg the scarps. Six days are 
spent in military reconnaissance with reports and sketches, and 
in competitive rifle-shooting. The examinations occupy twenty- 
one days, and eighteen are spent as holydays. 

In the second year substantially the same topics of an advanc- 
ing grade are pursued with an equally full course of study and 
lectures. The season for cutting timber, the ages of different 
kinds of trees to be felled, the proper time for a revolution or 
forest crop and its restoration ; mineralogy, lithology and the 
geological features of France ; saw-mills and everything relating 
thereto, are among the additional studies of the third term^ In 
the summer session, twenty-three days are spent in the forests 
of Meurthe-et-Moselle and of the I'Aine, in the study of the 
management of fellings formed of mixed timber, and of coppice 
being converted into timber forest, and fourteen days are 
allotted to the preparation of reports of these observations. 
Two days are devoted to land surveying and six to trigono- 
metrical surveys, making a trigonometrical survey of a forest 
in the environs of Nancy or of the Yosges, reconnoitering the 
ground, planting signals, measuring a base line and observing the 
angles. Twelve days are assigned to the preparation of dia- 
grams and calculations of the net-work of angles and a connec- 
tion of this net- work with the lines on the map of France. 
Eleven days are given to the study of the saw-mills in the 
Yosges, five days of work on the ground and six in the class- 
room are given to preparing a sketch and a description of 
diagrams of the mechanism of five saw-mills selected as the best 
specimens found in operation ; to experiments in the gauging 
of water-courses, the effect of water-wheels, and the time 
required in the work of sawing, and to the general coefficient of 
waste. 

The Winter Session of the third year extends over the five 
months from November to April, and is designed for advanced 
students. In addition to some branches already enumerated, 
zoology with especial attention to entomology, the ravages 
committed by insects upon forests, the means of averting or 
destroying them and of recovering a forest ravaged by them ; 
the fixation of sand dunes, the reclamation of barren wastes, 
and the re-foresting of denuded mountains ; the geology and 



•iU 



mineralogy of the mountains of France, mountain torrents, 
their causes and the means of preventing them, the 'plans of 
work projected and the works accomplished ; the chemistry of 
vegetation and all that relates to the production and assimila- 
tion of atmospherical and terrestrial elements. The Summer 
Session of the third year, continuing five months from the first 
of April, is largely occupied Vith field-work and observa- 
tions, especially in the study of the oak forests of Central 
France, the coniferous forests of the Yosges and Jura and the 
reforested regions of the Alps. During the entire course the 
field excursions are made under the direction of competent 
professors, and careful memoirs of these journeys and observa- 
tions, with sketches, plans and diagrams are always required. 

Italy has experienced the disastrous effects of forest denuda- 
tion, in climatic excesses, in spring torrents and summer 
droughts, or at least, in the great diminution of the summer 
streams and rivers — the sources of irrigation. A code of forest 
laws has lately been passed, for the extension and protection of 
the national forests, and for the replanting of communal and pri- 
vate woods. The scientific training of professional foresters is 
found needful to repair the great waste and damage done in pre- 
vious centuries. The ofiicers charged with the administration 
of these forest laws are mainly graduates of the Eoyal Instituto 
Forestale at Yallombrosa. While in Switzerland, a letter from 
our Minister at Kome, Hon. George P. Marsh (who had been 
informed of my errand in Europe), strongly advised me to visit 
Yallombrosa, and a letter from Mr. Marsh to the Director Gen- 
eral, Adolfo di Berenger, secured every facility for observation 
and information wdien T did visit that institution. Founded as 
an abbey by Pope Alexander 11. in 1070, it early became one 
of the most celebrated monasteries of Italy, if not of the world, 
remarkable for its romantic situation (vallis umbrosa, or shady 
valley of the Appenines, nearly six thousand feet above the sea), 
its great wealth, the extent of its lands and of its grand planted 
forests. The present magnificent buildings were erected about 
two hundred and fifty years ago (1637). For centuries this 
place has been visited by distinguished travelers. Dante 
delighted to ramble among these magnificent scenes. Mrs, 
Browning says of Milton : 



41 



" He sang of paradise and smiled, 
Eemembering Vallombrosa." 

When penetrating these dense forests and clambering up the 
steep ascents to the valley summit, I felt the fitness of his 
familiar words, and familiar they deserve to be with all our 
youth. 

"Thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks, 

In Yallombrosa, where the Etrurian shades 

High over arched, embower. 

. . . And overhead up grew, 

Insuperable height of loftiest shade, 

Cedar, and pine, and fir ard branching palm, 

A sylvan scene ; and as the ranks ascend 

Shade above shade, a woody theater of stateliest view." 

An hour's ride from Florence by the Arezzo Railway brings 
one to Pontassieve. Thence a drive of some eight miles by a 
series of zigzags and through avenues of cypress and mulberry 
trees, leads to the terminus of the carriage road. Grand and 
extensive views of the beautiful valley of the Arno (Yal 
d' Arno), open at every turn, with fine vineyards, orchards 
and highly cultivated fields, here and there protected by long 
dykes from the river floods which forest denudations on the 
tributaries of the Arno have occasioned. From the road a foot 
and mule path of three miles up a steep ascent leads to the an- 
cient monastery. Here were workmen cutting spars for ship 
building, to be floated down the Arno to Pisa, or into the Medi- 
terranean. These Benedictine monks centuries ago understood 
well the economic value of tree planting. It is due to their 
sagacity and foresight that these vast lands are now densely 
covered with various pines, firs, beech and chestnut. The very 
position of the trees, standing in exact rows, shows that tree 
planting on a large scale has here been successfully carried on 
for centuries. The silver firs, planted around the abbey centuries 
ago, are now magnificent and stately trees. 

The following sketch of this Forest School is condensed from 
a fuller history given me by Director Berenger. This monastery 
was appropriated by the State in 1865, and opened as a Forest 
School in 1867, though its organization was not completed till 
nearly two years later. As the snow lies deep for three months 
on these mountain heights, the school is transferred for four 



42 



months, from November to March, to the old castle of the Counts 
Guidi at Paterno near the base of the mountain, and only twelve 
hundred feet above the sea. During the remaining eight 
months the head-quarters are at the high elevation of Yallom- 
brosa. The contrast in the elevations of the two locations 
favors the maintenance of two distinct arboretums, the one at 
Paterno showing the vegetation of Southern Italy, and even 
the tender exotics of the tropics, while on the heights of Yallom- 
brosa are planted the trees of Northern Europe and America as 
well as of the Alps. Great varieties of pines, firs, larch, ash, 
chestnut, oak, beech are cultivated in the nurseries for planting 
on the slopes and heights of the Appenines. The Director 
expressed special interest in the culture of the Fraxinus Ameri- 
cana — our white ash. The students each have their small 
nursery lots in which they try their hands in planting and 
trans-planting various trees, thus uniting theory and practice. 

The Institution has its director and five professors, a library 
containing nearly 2,500 volumes of forest literature; a well 
furnished chemical laboratory ; a meteorological observatory, 
where the indications of the thermometer, barometer, pluviom- 
eter, anemometer, hygrometer and seismometer are regularly 
recorded ; instruments for tree-measuring and surveying and 
various arboricultural instruments, models of timber slides ; 
timber carts; sections of wood, indigenous and exotic, and ob- 
jects of natural history relating to forestry. The professors 
are appointed by the King, on the recommendation of the 
Minister of Agriculture. The number of pupils admissible is 
sixty. Besides the common rudiments, candidates for admission 
must pass an examination in history, natural history, algebra, 
geometry, physics and chemistry. The students wear the neat 
uniform of the Institution, which is that of a forest guard, with 
oak twigs of gold lace on the collar and cap. The discipline is 
mildly military, the students respond to the call of the trumpet 
instead of a college bell, cannot leave the precincts without 
permission, and are liable to confinement for insubordination. 
The students make frequent and sometimes extensive excur- 
sions through the national and communal forests, with the 
Professor of Natural History, to observe and collect specimens ; 
with the Professor of Mathematics and Surveying, to make plans 



43 



and elevations of the sarrounding lands, measure the height anu 
girth of trees, calculate the amount of timber, and learn the 
'various methods of management and exploitation of forests, and 
with Director Berenger for special exercises in practical forestry. 
Besides regular lesson trips, a long excursion is made annually 
to some extensive woods. One of these journeys of observation, 
occupying a month, extended to Naples during the International 
Exhibition of Woods used in Ship building, and included the 
inspection of the leading forests in Southern Italy. 
The following is the Cnrriculum : 

First Year. Mathematics^ including Algebra, Geometry 
and Trigonometry. Chemistry — Organic and Inorganic, with 
experiments. Natural History — Botany, Systematic and Veget- 
able Physiology. Forestry — Theoretic and Practical. Lan- 
guages — Italian, Grerman and French, with Eeading, Writing 
and translating of Forest Literature. 

Second Year. Mathematics applied — Differential and Inte- 
gral Calculus, Conic Sections, Measuring Heights of Trees and 
Cubic Contents, Plan Drawing and Valuation Surveys. Climat- 
ology and Forest Meteorology. Natural History — Botany, Den- 
drology, Forest Entomology, Geology and Mineralogy. Forest 
Economy — History of Forest Science, Practical Sylviculture, Sea- 
soning of Timber and Exploitation of Forests. Elements of Agri- 
culture — Improvement of Soils, Pasturage, Drainage, Agricul- 
ture, etc. Languages — Exercises in Italian, German and French. 

Third Year. Mathematics applied — Eates of Growth of 
Trees. Mensuration, Preparing Charts and Levels, Estimating 
Condition and Yalue of Forests, Forest Administration — Statis- 
tics of different Woods, Classification of Forests, Eeclamation 
of Barrens and Wastes, Planting of Sand Dunes, and of Marshes. 
Forest Land — Government and Pastoral Eights. Forest Economy 
— Political and National. Languages — Italian, German and 
French. 

The first year is mainly devoted to scientific training, and in 
the second and third years the practical details of forest man- 
agement are taught. Tracts of land bearing evergreen and 
deciduous trees of various ages are set apart to be managed by 
individual students. In the nursery also, each has a division 
^bearing his name where he may show his skill, patience and 



44: 



fidelity in preparing the soil, sowing the seed, watering the 
plants, and trans-planting the young trees. 

In Italy, Germany and France, the advice of the Government 
foresters is given gratuitously to all tree-planters, and the young 
trees are furnished from the nurseries connected with the 
Schools of Forestry at a nominal price far below the cost, in 
order to encourage tree-planting to the utmost. With all pro- 
prietors of forests, whether the State, the Commune, corpora- 
tions or individuals, the Government enjoins first, what must 
be done in all cases, and secondly, sets forth what may be done, 
that is, what is desirable but optional. In certain localities, the 
owner must get the permission of the forester of his province 
before he may fell trees on his own grounds. If the interest of 
that province and of the country require the retention of trees 
on the mountain tops, the State compensates the owner of the 
land for any loss thus incurred, or the older and larger trees 
only are cut, and a continuous forest growth maintained. It is 
their theory that the forests belong not to one generation only but 
to all, and each is bound to leave them as good as it found them. 

Schools of Forestry in Europe are of two kinds ; first those 
designed exclusively for the study of forest science and its 
collateral branches, the Forstahademie ; second the Allgemeine 
Hochschule^ or the collegiate or polytechnic institution with a 
comprehensive course of study, of which forestry is one promi- 
nent department. Kancy and Yallombrosa are examples of. 
Forest Schools, pure and simple. Carlsruhe and Hohenheim 
will illustrate the other class. " The Polytechnic" in Carlsruhe 
comprises six separate departments, viz: Mathematics, Engi- 
neering, Machinery, Architecture, Chemistry and Forestry, with 
a staff of forty-nine professors, lecturers, tutors and assistants. 
I was struck with the extent of the eleven Collections " here 
provided to aid in instruction, including objects connected with 
forests ; models connected with engineering, machinery and \ 
architecture, besides the usual botanic, mineral, and philosophic 
collections, and an arboretum or forest garden. Professor Meyer 
said that each of these departments really helps all the others, 
and the union plan proves the most economic and feasible, 
and that the two Professors of Forestry here by the aid of their 
associates accomplish results which require from five to seven 
professors in the isolated Forstakademies. 



45 



The Royal Wurtemburg Academ)^ at Hohenheim is a School 
both of Agriculture and Forestry. Its immense edifice, formerly 
a summer palace of the Wurtemburg kings, is delightfully 
situated on very high ground nine miles from Stuttgart, Near 
the buildiag is a fine park and experimental and botanic gar- 
dens, groves and an arboricultural nursery. The botanic garden 
covering over twelve acres contains some two thousand species 
and varieties of plants important in forest and naval economy, 
and an " exotic garden " of twenty acres specially adapted to 
forest botany. Near by upon the same mountain range is a 
forest district of about six thousand acres, embracing a variety 
of soil and of trees. The institution has an extensive collection 
of implements used in practical forestry, with models of machines 
and studies pertaining thereto ; a museum of forest products, 
an herbarium containing over ten thousand species, and a very 
interesting collection of microscopic preparations more extensive 
than I had elsewhere seen, with a curious collection of patholog- 
ical specimens, illustrative of diseased malformation and some 
seven thousand specimens of fruits and seeds. Great varieties 
of fine wood showing the texture and grain, are exhibited in 
the museums of all Forest Schools, but this is a remarkable 
collection of "microscopic specimens" — transverse sections of 
"wood thin as the finest paper arranged in books as photographs 
are set in the spaces of an album. Held up to the light, 
these thin sections are translucent, almost transparent, and show 
the most delicate shades in the grain of the wood. Here is also 
a collection of noxious insects and all animals harmful to trees. 
The insects are shown in all their progressive s,tates, as eggs, 
larvae, pupa or chrysalis, caterpillar and moth, with their nests, 
and perforations in the stems or branches, and with samples of 
the trunk, bark, branch, root, leaf, cone or fruit, both sound 
and injured. For a careful comparison, the healthy and dis- 
eased specimens are placed side by side. 

The curriculum fills two years, and in the forest department 
embraces among others the following topics : Forest Economy; 
History and Literature of Forest Economy ; Forest Products, in- 
cluding Forest Botany, Sylviculture, Forest protection. Tech- 
nical properties of timber, Uses of forests and forest technology ; 
Forest administration including mensuration of trees and forests, 



46 



■partition of forests for exploitation, valuation of forests and 
practical maoagement of forests, forest excursions, " demonstra- 
tions " in different forest districts. Botanic Garden and Museum 
of Forest Products, cubic measurements of trees and cubic 
contents of woods, land surveying and levelling and mensura- 
tion of forests with theodolite. 

For lodging and tuition, the students, if subjects of Wurtem- 
burg, pay less than forty dollars a year, but foreign students 
are charged threefold more. Foreigners are admitted who pass 
the required examination and produce the ticket of legitima- 
tion " from the proper authorities. Dom Pedro appreciates the 
national importance of forestry in Brazil. I was much inter- 
ested in an intelligent and ambitious young Brazilian who is 
here training himself for a forest appointment in his native 
country. 

A striking illustration of the influence of Forest Schools is 
found in the authorship of their professors and graduates. In 
the long run, the influence of any institution may be measured 
largely b}^ the authorship which it prompts. Judged by this 
test, the Forest Schools of Europe have made a worthy record. 
By the cooperation of their professors and other writers, and 
sometimes of government officials especially commissioned to 
investigate different branches of the subject, the literature of 
forestry, already large, is now rapidly increasing. A German 
catalogue gives the titles of 1,815 volumes on forestry issued 
prior to 181:2, and the titles of 650 works published in the six 
years prior to 1876. On an average, over one hundred new 
books on forestry appear annually in the German language. 
One of the Spanish Commissioners to the Centennial Exposition, 
Senor Morera, published a list of 1,126 volumes on forestry in 
the Spanish language alone. Director Berenger of Yallombrosa 
has published over thirty books and pamphlets, among them 
one pronounced by Hon. George P. Marsh of great value on 
"The Absolute Influence of Forests on the Temperature of 
the Air." He also edits an able Journal of Forestry, "The 
Giornale di Economia Forestale." 

The question has been much mooted in Europe of late, 
whether Schools of Forestry should be isolated, or connested as 
an additional department with existing universities or Poly- 



47 



teclinic or other institutions of a more comprehensive character. 
This was the leading topic of discussion at the last Congress of 
Foresters which was held at Freiburg in Baden, and attended 
by nearly four hundred members, representing all parts of 
Germany, also Switzerland, Austria and Bussia. The leading 
German writers on forestry and the most prominent govern- 
ment officials in the management of the Crown and Communal 
forests were there. The President of the Convention was Dr. 
Nordlinger, the eminent Professor of Forestry at Hohenheim. 
The discussion, which was virtually a continuation of the debate 
begun at the Convention in Miilhausen the year before, awak- 
ened great interest and occupied six hours, the sederunt com- 
mencing at 8 A. M. and continuing, with an hour's intermission, 
till 3 P. M. 

A brief summary of the leading arguments shows the 
feasibility of connecting a Department of Forestry with the 
Sheffield Scientific School. The discussion was opened by 
Professor Danckelmann, Director of the School of Forestry at 
Newstadt-Eberswalde in Prussia, defending the separate Forst- 
ahademie. He contended that Universities are designed to 
aid thorough investigations in the abstract rather than in the 
concrete. Though rich fountains of knowledge, they do not 
teach practical skill. The Forest Academies on the other hand 
keep the practical ever in view, and the attainment of knowl- 
edge is always combined with practice. Four things are essen- 
tial ; first, instruction in the technical work of forestry ; next, 
in the management of forests ; thirdly, in scientific research ; 
and lastly, in the practical application of theories. Special 
schools are best fitted to secure these results. The Eochschulen 
are located far away from any forest, and the professors there- 
fore are less acquainted with practical forestry, and the students, 
though more varied in their attainments, will fail to know 
thoroughly the things most essential for their profession ; they 
will remain strangers to forests, and will not learn how to*ques- 
tion trees ; they may see cases of dead insects and yet learn 
nothing of the lives and habits of insects. To be a means of 
instruction, the forest must be a demonstration ground, and 
should be so situated that it can be visited daily without 
fatigue or expense. Though the University is the center of 



48 



calture and aristocracy, each of these is of secondary impor- 
tance in the traini ng in forest technology. The professors of the 
accessory sciences are out of sympathy with the forest, and 
busy themselves with problems irrespective of their relation to 
forest science. If it be said that the Universities have pro- 
duced more eminent writers and thinkers than the forest 
academy, the remedy should be found in the abademy and in 
the enlargement of its course of study, with opportunity for the 
stadent to resort to the forest every day, proposing and solving 
his questions on vegetable physiology and zoology. 

The speaker appointed to open the discussion on the other 
side, Dr. von Seckendorff from Yienna, attributed the origin of 
isolated schools of forestry to the former state of forests, and 
the limited education required for forest service in a by -gone 
day. But now a more scientific method of research in forest 
matters has been introduced, and a higher testing examination 
is demanded of students in forest science. A liberal education 
is essential here as well as in the other professions. The advo- 
cates of separate forest schools claim two points of especial 
superiority ; first, that their students are better trained in prac- 
tical forestry, and second, that in these only are the studies 
conducted with due reference to the requirements of the forester. 
They assume that in the vicinity of the Allgemeine Hoch- 
schulen there are no forests suitable for the instruction of stu- 
dents, and that a purely theoretical education only must here 
prevail. These assumptions are unfounded. 

The number of University and Hochsclmle towns in Germany, 
richly surrounded by woods is very great. In a line drawn 
from the coast of the German Ocean to the place of this meet- 
ing alone, there are Hanover, Gottingen, Marburg, Giessen, 
Heidelberg, Carlsruhe and Freiburg, all so surrounded. It is 
not the extent of a forest which decides its suitability as a 
means of instruction, so much as its variety of trees and modes 
of treatment and exploitation. 

The second assumption will not Dear examination. Science 
and practical work are not antagonistic to each other. In the 
Universities instruction does not go beyond what is desirable 
for every educated man. And there ought to be no ground for 
the suspicion that any students of forestry choose that depart- 



49 



ment because it makes the least demand upon them. Situated 
near railways, the Universities have the best facilities for 
forestral excursions and for fullest demonstrations in the field. 
As a matter of fact, the special schools do not turn out more 
practical men, and are not supplied with better districts for 
excursions, while on the other hand, in the Allgemeine Hoch- 
schulen^ the instruction in the accessory sciences can be more 
complete and extended, and be given at no additional expense 
to the State. 

After a long and spirited discussion by prominent professors 
from both classes of Forest Schools, the President, Dr. ISTord- 
linger, desired those who were in favor of combining instruction 
in forestry with other departments in the university or 
Allgemeine Hochschulen to rise, when seemingly the whole 
assembly rose, which was followed by vehement applause. 
When those who favored the separate system were invited to 
rise, only sixteen members stood up. It will thus be seen that 
the result of the fullest and latest experience of Europe is in 
favor of organizing a forest department in connection with 
some existing collegiate institution. 



50 



INDUSTEIAL SCHOOLS. 

No feature of the Educational Systems of Grermany, Switzer- 
land, Austria, Belgium, France and other European countries 
is more striking to an American observer, than the large 
number of Industrial Schools, specially designed to train ap- 
prentices and make skilled workmen and competent foremen. 
These schools are very numerous, and as various as the kinds of 
industry pursued in each country or province. There has been 
the greatest progress in manufactures in those countries where 
these schools have been maintained longest and most liberally.- 
Geneva has for many years maintained a Horological School, 
and the Swiss watches have long been celebrated throughout 
the world. Last summer I visited the new Horological Institute 
then building in Geneva, a magnificent edifice to cost over 
$200,000, and also witnessed the work of the school then in its old 
quarters. The course of study and practice covers three years. 
There were seven instructors, who are experts both in the 
theory and practice. No one can graduate till he has proved 
his skill, again and again, by making an entire watch of stand- 
ard excellence. The patient training of these classes, or rather 
of each individual member, in the minutest particulars, both in 
theory and practice, and the criticism of defects in the work 
done, illustrate the attention given to details in all Indu.strial 
Schools. 

The same attention to minute details is seen in the Industrial 
School at Lyons, France, to which the preeminence of that city 
in the manufacture of silk is largely due. It has twelve pro- 
fessors, and the course of study occupies three years. Here, 
as in all Industrial Schools, a prominent study is drawing, 
drawing ornaments, tinted drawings, and sketching plans of 
machines from memory. Thorough instruction is given in 
every detail relating to the manufacture of textile fabrics, espe- 
cially of silks, the natural history of silk, treatment of the 
silk worm and cocoons, spinning, throwing, weaving and testing 
of silks ; sorting and cleaning ; winding, warping and beam- 
ing ; changing of looms for weaving different styles; defects 
in operations and their remedies ; decomposition of tissues ; 



51 



chemistry, especially as applied to dyeing and printing ; 
physics with its applications to heating, steam-boilers, drying 
and ventilation ; mechanics, embracing prime motors, materials 
and construction ; hygiene, including physiology, noxious and 
useful animals, dangerous and unhealthy occupations, conta- 
gious diseases and how to avoid taking them ; rural economy 
and "industrial plants." Manual exercises are conducted in 
the workshops in making, mending, putting up and shipping 
looms, in turning, filing, forging, fitting and various joiner's and 
machinist work. Frequent visits are made to the various 
factories in Lyons, under the lead of an instructor, where every 
part and process is fully explained. The students afterwards 
draw from memory plans of patterns and of machines. 

About one hundred pupils on an average are in attendance. 
The regular charge for tuition, use of laboratories and work- 
shops, is $140 a year. Indigent students are aided by the 
Chamber of Commerce and Municipal Council of Lyons, so 
that a portion only pay the fijl-t-^ttitien. . That this school, 
conducted without aid fromytfe government of France, should 
be so liberally supported by /the citizens of Lyons, and continue 
to flourish for so long a period, is ample evidence , of its great 
usefulness in the opinion of the most competent jddges. 

More than sixty years ago France^started special schools in 
the arts of designing, engraving and dyeing ; in silk and ribbon 
weaving and lace making ; in carving, stone-cutting and dia- 
mond-cutting (hence the diamond-cutting for the world is still 
carried on mainly in Paris) ; in porcelain and various ceramic 
productions, and the preeminence thus gained is still retained. 
The artistic manufactures of France command the markets of 
the world. The Industrial Schools more recently organized in 
Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, Austria, Italy and England, 
which in the aggregate are numbered by thousands, make these 
nations formidable competitors in artistic work. 

When invited by the Minister of Public Instruction of France 
to visit the National Porcelain Factory at Sevres, I expressed 
to him surprise that such an establishment should come under 
the supervision of the Educational Department, to which he 
replied, "It is because it is the duty of this department to 
supervise and control the Preparatory School for Sevres, which 



52 



you should first visit." On inspecting this School of Design in 
Paris, I found in the lower rooms the methods and work of a 
first-class drawing school. But in the upper rooms the classes 
were painting on elegant goblets, cups, plates, vases and other 
choicer wares, just brought from Sevres and to be returned there 
for baking. After witnessing this truly artistic work, I no 
longer wondered that in the Sevres factory itself the artisan 
had indeed become the artist, and that only men of princely 
wealth could procure the products of this unrivalled estab- 
lishment. 

In Belgium the girls have shared the advantages of Indus- 
trial Schools as well as the boys. The schools for training in 
lace-making and embroidering, in Brussels, have long been cele- 
brated, and kindred schools have more recently been opened in 
Eowlers, Ghent, Ath, Deerlyk and in many other places in that 
busy little kingdom. To those familiar with this fact,* it was 
no surprise that Belgian lace shown at the Philadelphia Expo- 
sition was unrivalled. Some Industrial Schools are main- 
tained wholly by the central government, others partially, and 
still others are supported by endowments, and many are private 
institutions dependent mostly on tuition for support. A large 
number called apprentice schools are maintained by benevolent 
associations. These are designed to train boys and girls both 
in skilled manipulations in various trades, and in the practical 
studies and theories most helpful in such pursuits. 

Belgium, with about fifty industrial schools, and fifteen thou- 
sand apprentices graduated from them, Germany with over 
fifty-two thousand apprentices in fourteen hundred and fifty 
industrial schools, and France with twelve thousand industrial 
scholars, show the practical appreciation of these institutions 
in these countries, which distance the competition of surround- 
ing nations in the great markets of the world. Steam and 
the telegraph are bringing all nations into such near neighbor- 
hood that industrial ascendancy will belong to that country 
which provides the best industrial education. 

The Artisan School established nine years ago in Eotterdam, 
Holland, has already two hundred pupils and commands the 
confidence of that community. Candidates for admission must 
pass an examination in the simpler rudiments, and are expected 



5^ 



to remain in the school three years. The institution is both a 
school and a shop, and the time of the pupils is daily divided 
between the two. Drawing, Physics and Elementary Mechanics 
are prominent among the practical studies of the school room. 
In the shops a great variety of trades are taught, such as stone- 
cutting, including keystones, steps, thresholds, flooring tiles 
and placing plinths ; masonry, including plain walls, founda- 
tions, chimneys, niches, sewers, arches, &c. ; smith ery, or mak- 
ing cramps, hooks, hinges, nuts, locks, girders, &c. The braziers 
are taught forging, turning, stretching and soldering, and make 
water-cans, dust-pans, kettles, basins, springs and various 
kitchen utensils. The instrument-makers learn to cut screws 
and worms, forge steel and copper and cast copper objects. 
The carpenters make chests, desks, trestles, windows, doors and 
the like. The painters learn to make putty, grind paint, polish 
wood, set glass, paint letters and to grain in imitation of marble 
or the choicer woods. In the Philadelphia Exposition the 
admirable exhibit of the various articles made by these boys 
proved alike their skill and the practical value of this institution. 

In view of the great variety of the work and the need of 
individual instruction, twenty-one masters are employed in this 
school. Grreat prominence is given to drawing, as lying at the 
foundation of skilled industry. The Director is the teacher of 
construction and projective drawing. There are four other 
teachers of drawing — rectilinear, architectural, ornamental and 
model drawing, and one or more in each of the other depart- 
ments above named. The boys draw simple constructions from 
wood, iron or brick work, such as window joints, doors, jambs, 
ravelins, stair-cases, roof-constructions, brace-works, springs, 
locks, cornices, architraves, &c. The school studies occupy 
each morning and the practical instruction in the workshops 
the afternoon. As soon as the boys are made familiar with 
the tools, they are entrusted with practical and marketable 
work, not sham or play-work, but the making of saleable arti- 
cles for the trade, so that they at once feel that they are engaged 
in real business. This plan excites the ambition of the boys 
and adds interest and dignity to their work. The workshops 
are of the most approved kind and are supplied with the best 
tools and appliances. In the carpenter's shop, there are benches 



64 



with their appliances for eighty boys ; and in the smithies are 
all needed forges, anvils, vices, benches, &c., for seventy boys. 
The directors, on whose authority the above statements are 
given, say, that on successfully completing their three years 
course, these boys receive considerably higher paj^ than those 
who have not enjoyed the advantages of the school. 

Needle work forms a part of the course of instruction for 
girls in a large part of the elementary schools of Europe. In 
Switzerland four thousand three hundred and seventy-three 
females are employed in schools teaching needle work. In 
some schools I saw these teachers training their scholars in the 
use of the American sewing machine. 

When one has inspected her technical schools and her 
twenty-nine industrial schools, he is no longer surprised that 
Switzerland is especially the home of industry, for her mechanics 
are educated and skillful. Though hemmed in by mountains, 
without a seaport, with few minerals and no coal, with costly 
transportation, all freight from the sea board coming over for- 
eign territory, she threatens the ribbon trade of Coventry, rivals 
the English in muslin and delaine, and the world in watches 
and wood-carving. More than one million watches are made 
annually in Geneva and I^euchatel alone. The Swiss are an 
ingenious and industrious people. They believe in the dignity 
of labor and in the thorough mastery of some trade. In their 
industrial schools, prominence is given to drawing, designing 
and moulding, as well as to practice in the trades. Hence the 
world pays substantial tribute to Switzerland for the exquisite 
taste displayed in the decorative arts, their unequaled carvings, 
their beautiful chasings in gold and silver, their silk ribbons, 
their watches and music boxes. 

The Earl of Koseburj^ says that the cause of this rapid pro- 
gress of Swiss manufacture is plainly " the complete and special 
education which she gives in primary schools and practical 
schools, and trade schools, and secondary schools, and cantonal 
schools, all topped up by the great Polytechnic Institute at 
Zurich. The Swiss manufacturer is master of his business, and 
his workmen with whom he is in perpetual contact, respect him 
for this. Master and servant have been at the same school learn- 
ing their crafty and they know it thoroughly." 



55 



Public schools, industriai schools and the Polytechnic Insti- 
tute have in a remarkable manner unified and fraternized the 
people of these twenty -five cantons. Though separate in race, 
religion and language, they are one in national sympathy and 
interest, proud of their history, and prouder still of their recent 
progress and manufacturing prosperity. While beggars are 
found everywhere in Europe, there is less pauperism in Switzer- 
land than in any other nation on the continent. With no 
communism, there is still a general diffusion of property, and 
almost every one is a land-owner. 

In our country by reason of the restrictions imposed by our 
Trades Unions, apprenticeships are so much lessened that it is 
now difl&cult for boys to learn a trade. Hence increasing num- 
bers are growing up to manhood in idleness, without any regular 
calling, or seeking to earn a livelihood without manual labor. 
This limitation of apprenticeships is a short-sighted and suicidal 
plan, sure to cripple our future mechanics. It seeks a temporary 
gain at the sacrifice of a permanent prosperity, and is depriving 
many boys of that thorough training in the several trades which 
is essential to their skill and success. The system of apprentice- 
ship ought to be encouraged as an indispensable part of the 
practical education of our future artizans. Otherwise our 
youth must surrender the most lucrative positions to skilled 
mechanics imported from abroad. This waning of apprentice- 
ships, which cannot easily be remedied, creates the greater 
necessity for industrial education. 

In speaking of the substitution of steam power for hand 
labor, J. Scott Eussell says : " Occupations which require no 
skill, but only brute force, will necessarily be vacated by human 
hands. Society, in the march of improvement, is as certain to 
do without the unskilled, unintelligent and uneducated as 
it is to do without wild plants and animals." Certainly any 
system of public instruction which leaves industrial education 
out of the account is radically defective. Fortunately this 
was the theory and practice of the early settlers of Connecti- 
cut. The founders of this State valued and honored industry. 
The code of 1650 which stood in this respect unchanged for over 
one hundred and fifty }• ears required, " That all parents and 
masters do breed and bring up their children and apprentices in 



56 



some honest lawful calling, labor or employment, either in hus- 
bandry or some other trade, profitable to themselves and the 
Commonwealth, if they will not or cannot train them up in 
learning to fit them for higher employments." In 1683, Penn 
proposed the following resolution, which was adopted by the 
Provincial Council, " That all children within this province of 
the age of twelve years shall be taught some useful trade or 
skill, to the end that none may be idle, but that the poor may 
work to live, and the rich, if they become poor, may not want." 
How different would have been the history of Yirginia and 
South Carolina, with their sunny climate and greater natural 
resources, had the founders of those States preached and prac- 
ticed these sentiments which have been the source of the thrift, 
growth and prosperity of the iSTorth. Elizabeth Thompson 
well says : " Honest labor is the need of the hour, alike 
demanded by the physical, mental, moral and financial condi- 
tion of the nation. Industrial education alone can bring about 
this reformation by joining with labor skill, dignity and 
honor." Industrial schools are now more needed than new 
colleges. "The danger is not of over education, with earnest 
aims and in the right channels, but of a genteel and lazy dilet- 
tanteism." 

I have discussed this subject partly in order to invite the 
attention of wealthy men to its importance, and ultimately secure 
liberal endowments for industrial education. The extract from 
the will of David Watkinson, given below, and the liberal offer 
of one hundred thousand dollars hj Hon. T. M. Allyn for the 
support of an industrial school in Hartford, show that this need 
has long been felt. If the Loomis Institute with its large 
endowment shall be devoted to the purpose of industrial educa- 
tion, it will meet a great and growing want, which no existing 
institution in the State attempts to supply. If the liberal offer 
of Mr. Alljm should be continued and accepted, it would be a 
nucleus around which other gifts would gather till the school 
should prove a great benefaction to the State. Such, at least, 
was the result of the donation of Mr. Boynton in Massachusetts. 

The Worcester Free Institute was started by the gift of 
$127,000 by John Boynton. This beginning led Ichabod 
Washburne to consider the pressing demand for industrial 



57 



training, and he gave $130,000 to enlarge the resources of the 
Institute. Further endowments were made by Stephen Salis- 
bury of $250,000, and by the State of Massachusetts of 
$50,000 giving a total endowment of $557,000. If the surviv- 
ing members of the Loomis family carry out their present plan, 
the "Loomis Institute" will have double this endowment. 
Without even the semblance of dictation in ' the plans which 
they alone have the right to form, and with a grateful apprecia- 
tion of the beneficent spirit they evince, I most respectfully 
suggest to them, and to other wealthy men who desire to become 
benefactors of the State, this means of meeting a great public 
need and erecting a lasting monument to their memory. 

The following is the plan of the proposed gift of Mr. AUyn 
to the city of Hartford, some five years ago. 

To the May or ^ Aldermen and Common Covmcil of the City of 
Hartford : 

The undersigned hereby offers to give to the City of Hartford 
the sum of one hundred thousand dollars^ to be expended in the 
establishment and erection of an industrial school (under such 
rules and regulations as the authorities of the city may from 
time to time make), for the free education of both boys and 
girls in the business avocations of life, agriculture and the 
mechanic arts. The school should be a model, fashioned 
after our best ideal. It should possess ample grounds for an 
agricultural department, botanical gardens, and workshops, 
where all the principal trades may be learned. Every boy, 
at the same time he is acquiring a knowledge of the arts, 
sciences and modern languages, should become a practical 
agriculturist, or master some useful trade. The girls should 
be instructed in all the practical duties of the household, be- 
come familiar with the chemistry of the kitchen, and made 
to master the art of making any article of a lady's wa'rdrobe, 
and also they may learn bookkeeping, banking, telegraphy, 
photography or any other occupation that is within the meas- 
ure of their strength and adapted to their tastes. In this 
manner the education of the student would become a health- 
ful exercise and a most fascinating amusement, instead of 
being (like the present system) destructive to vitality, exhaust- 



58 



ing the brain, and converting the school-room into an unat- 
tractive place little better than a prison. 

It is believed that the amount proposed to be given will 
be sufficient for the purchase of the ground, erect suitable 
buildings and supply all the tools and apparatus required for 
the carrying out of the enterprise. The annual expense in- 
curred of running the institution, after deducting the amount 
it would be entitled to receive from the school fund, should 
be cheerfully borne by the city. Should the proposition be 
entertained and the city accept the gift, it may be necessary to 
execute articles of agreement to secure the faithful perform- 
ance of the trust assumed by the city. 

T. M. Allyn. 

EXTEACT FROM THE WiLL OF DaVID W ATKINSON, WHO 

DIED AT Hartford, Conn., Dec. 18, 1857. 
Codicil No. 11. 

Article V. " Desiring to render a public benefit to the com- 
munity in which I live, and to the State of Connecticut gener- 
ally, by aiding in the establishment in the town of Hartford of 
a Juvenile Asylum and Farm School, for the family and school 
and industrial training of a class of children not now adequately 
provided for in any educational or humane institution : I do 
give and bequeath to my Executors the lot of land of about 
ten acres, surrounded b}^ four streets, known as the Pavilion 
property, with the buildings standing thereon, and by me esti- 
mated to be worth the sum of $1:0,000 and iu addition to said 
lot the sum of $20,000, said lot to be conveyed in fee simple, 
and said money to be paid over to Henry Barnard 2d, Edmond 
G. Howe, William L. Collins, William N. Matson, Henry Clay 
Trumbull, Daniel C. Gilman, Koland Mather, Newton Case, 
Alfred Watkinson, John S. Butler, Henry A. Perkins, Albert 
W. Butler, Edward Goodwin, E. A. Bulkeley, William D. 
Shipman and Austin Dunham, or such of them as may be living 
at the time of my decease, as Trustees for the purposes and 
uses herein set forth, viz : — to aid in the establishment and 
support of an institution for the relief, protection, instruction, 
reformation and employment of children between the ages of 



59 



six and twenty-one years who may be voluntarily entrusted to 
it for any or all of these purposes by the parent or guardians, 
or committed to its charge by competent authority. 

Article VII. The institution designed to be established and 
aided by this bequest, is to be organized and conducted on 
the general principles and methods recognized in the Kauhen 
House near Hamburg in Germany, and the Agricultural Colony 
at Mettray in France, as described in Barnard's Naiional Educa- 
tion in Europe (Edition of 1854), and in the Boston Asylum 
and Farm School, incorporated in its present form in 1833, 
and the New York Juvenile Asylum, incorporated in 1851, 
with such modifications as may be by the Trustees deemed to 
be better adapted to the peculiar condition of the people of this 
State, or which may be suggested by their own experience or 
that of similar institutions." 

The amount of the Watkinson Fund is now $207,000. Of 
this sum $162,000 is invested in productive funds and $45,000 
in land. The last sentence of the will gives the Trustees 
authority to make such modifications as they may deem need- 
ful for the industrial training of the inmates of the School. 
If industrial education becomes a prominent feature of the 
Institution, it will, in the words of the will, be better 
adapted to the peculiar condition of the people of this 
State." The principles and methods recognized in the Eauhen 
House and Mettray School may be inferred from the follow- 
ing statement: The "Colonic Agricole," at Mettray, near 
Tours, in France, was founded in 1839 as an institution for the 
reformation and training of children liable to become vicious 
^nd criminal. Besides receiving instruction in the necessary 
school studies, they are taught various useful occupations, 
such as farming, and the trades of the wheelwright, blacksmith, 
joiner, carpenter, mason, shoe-maker, wooden-shoe-maker, 
tailor, rope-maker, sail-maker, etc. 

The Eeform School of the " Eauhen House," at Horn, near 
Hamburg, was founded in 1833. Here as at Mettray, the 
" family system " is maintained. The labor performed includes 
house-keeping and home-work, field and garden culture, and 
such occupations as shoe-making, making and mending clothes 
and bedding, carpentry and wooden-shoe-making, woolen-thread 



60 



spinning, baking, masonry and painting, house-keeping and 
basket-making. There are also workshops for printing, book- 
binding, lithographing, stereotyping and wood-engraving. The 
girls fill the places of servants, cooks, washerwomen, ironers, 
laundry-women and seamstresses. The younger girls help the 
older, make and mend coarse linen, knit and mend stockings, 
etc. 

The Grerman Government has long sought to make industrial 
pursuits reputable and universal. To this end, members of the 
royal family have practiced as well as preached the gospel of 
honest work. In Carlsruhe, I learned of an excellent girls' 
school in the Schloss^ in which the Grrand Duchess of Baden, 
the only daughter of the Emperor of Germany, had recently 
placed her young daughter, with instructions that she should 
be. excused from none of the household industries required of 
the other pupils, that she should be trained in sewing and 
knitting, and made as thorough a seamstress as if she were to 
earn her livelihood by her needle. Daring her school life she 
is not to be distinguished by any of the high titles w^hich she 
may bear in after life. In all respects she is to be on a par 
with her young companions, receiving no favoritism in view of 
her rank, but to WOEK and play, run and romp, give and take 
on perfectly equal terms with her companions, and receive 
exactly the same punishments if remiss in study or work. 
The present Crown Prince of Prussia early learned the cabinet 
makers' trade, and at Babelsberg near Potsdam, the Summer 
Palace of the Emperor of Germany, are shown articles of fur- 
niture of superior workmanship made by him. His cousin, 
Prince Frederick Charles, learned the trade of glazier, and 
became quite artistic and enthusiastic in his craft. Fine speci- 
mens of his work may be seen in the Potsdam Palace, consisting 
chiefly of colored glass tastefully joined together by means of 
lead and tin strips, like the fine colored memorial glass windows 
so often found in churches. Such examples of honoring indus- 
try have exerted a vast and beneficent influence throughout 
the German Empire 



61 



EDUCATION AND LABOR 

The great majority of our pupils must work for a living. 
By tlie ordinance of Heaven, the necessity of labor is well- 
nigb. universal. Kature and history alike confirm the old 
decree, "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread.'* 
Teachers and school officers should carefully inquire whether 
our schools are accomplishing all they ought to do for the 
working classes. It is a grand result that all are trained to 
read and write and cipher, and learn something of the other 
common rudiments. In no part of the world, except Germany, 
are there so few native illiterates as in New England. 

The general intelligence of the people is one obvious cause of 
our exemption from the railway strikes of last summer. The 
sober second thought prevailed here, while madness ruled the 
hour elsewhere. But beneficent as has been the influence of 
the public school in New England, it has by no means done its 
whole duty to the laboring classes. More should be said and 
done to dignify labor and prepare our youth to become skilled 
workmen as well as industrious and upright citizens. It is a 
mistake to suppose that education need create any aversion to 
labor, or that those who do the roughest work need the least 
schooling. 

Under the system of slavery in the South, and until recently 
with the serfs of Eussia and the equally illiterate farm hands 
of England, it was held as an axiom that schooling would 
make laborers discontented, restless and unprofitable ser- 
vants, and that universal education would render manual 
labor distasteful and disreputable. Too much of this mis- 
chievous legacy of slavery lingers among us still. The silly 
and wicked notion that labor is menial ought to be refuted in 
our schools, where our youth should be early taught the neces- 
sity and dignity of labor, as the primal source of all human 
excellence and progress. Girls as well as boys should be early 
taught both in the family and school that to learn to be useful 



62 



is alike their duty, privilege and interest. Education should 
thus be made the auxiliary of labor. Instead of treating it as 
a degrading drudgery, education should elevate labor and 
render it more skillful and productive. If the true bearing of 
education on industry was taught in our schools, our youth 
would grow up under the salutary conviction that education 
is economy, and so far from degrading labor makes it more 
inviting and profitable, because the skilled workman so fore- 
casts his plans that every blow tells, thus economizing his time 
and strength and stock, and even in the humblest work, accom- 
plishing more, in better style, and with less damage to tools or 
machinery, than the boor who can use only brute muscle. Pride 
in one's work leads to higher excellence both in his craft and 
character. The skilled artizan who delights to do his best 
to-day, will aspire to do better still to-morrow. On the other 
hand, the too common theory that labor is a degrading drudgery 
will consciously demean any workman and bar improvement in 
his trade. 

Connecticut is a busy hive of manufactories. The industrial 
interests of no State are more vital to its prosperity. We are 
a working people, and the cause of the workman is the cause of 
all. The problem of our State and of our day is to elevate 
work by educating and thus elevating the workmen. The 
masses are learning that mere muscle is weak, that brains help 
the hands in all work, that knowledge multiplies the value and 
productive power of muscular efforts. If knowledge is power, 
ignorance is waste and weakness. What a man is, stamps an 
impress upon what he does, even in the humblest forms of 
industry. The character of the work depends upon the work- 
man. Whatever elevates the laborer improves his labor. In 
proportion as you degrade the operative even to the degree of 
serf or slave, you depreciate his work. You can dignify work 
therefore in no way so surely as by elevating the workman. 
The wealth and welfare of individuals and States, always 
dependent on labor, can be most fully secured only by edu- 
cated labor. If rightly conducted, our schools, so far from 
breeding discontent with the humblest pursuits, will prepare 
for success in the ordinary callings of life. 

Instead of this, I find in some cases the chief aim is promo- 



63 



tion to the next higher grade, and from that up to the highest 
or High School, and the programme is planned for those who 
complete the full curriculum, rather than for the majority who 
withdraw early for work or business. It is worthy of inquiry 
whether at each successive step the conditions of promotion 
may not wisely include the same studies and attainments 
which constitute the best preparation for the business of life, 
as well as for higher grades in school. 

How to secure the best results with the least cost of time as 
well as money, is a problem not yet fully solved. Our text 
books, now too voluminous, should comprise less of minute 
details and more of practical methods and principles. Such 
topics in arithmetic as the least common multiple of common 
fractions, casting out of nines in multiplication and division, 
alligation medial and alternate, and commutation of radix, may 
well be omitted in a common school course, or briefly noticed 
in the appendix. Those and kindred topics, of no use in 
ordinary business, fill a large space in nearly all the arithmetics. 
They have a traditionary sanction. In continuing them the 
authors have consulted usage more than utility. Like the 
titled scions of rank in the old world, they have come down by 
so long a literary descent that no one disputes their right to 
their honored place. Worth m^ore than all these complicated 
processes is the thorough mastery of the ground rules. In all 
our schools rapid mental combinations should be daily prac- 
ticed till pupils can add, multiply and divide with the utmost 
facility and accuracy. This done, the rest of arithmetic will be 
comparatively easy and pleasant. 

Ex-President Thomas Hill justly complains that our Arith- 
metics have been expanded until the unfortunate pupil is lost 
in a wilderness of words, and does not find his way through, in 
time to learn to cipher. The science of arithmetic receives so 
much attention that the art is neglected. Life is not long 
enough to spend so long a proportion of it on arithmetic as is 
spent in the modern system of teaching it, and arithmetic is too 
valuable an art to have our children neglect to acquire facility 
in it, instead of being stupefied and disgusted with premature 
attempts to understand it as a science." It is certainly a use- 
less repetition to require children to learn, for example, explana- 



64 



tions of the first principles of fractions, percentage and the like 
as they are scattered through four or five volumes, each suc- 
cessive series setting forth the same subjects only with greater 
fullness and complication. In many schools arithmetic is thus 
made a subject of study for eight or nine years, when three 
or four years ought to give the pupil the mastery of the essen- 
tials, including rapid mental combinations. He should learn 
the multiplication table early and thoroughly, and acquire great 
rapidity in all practical processes. 

By the condensation or omission of too extended serial books 
in geography, grammar and arithmetic, and in the latter study 
mastering thoroughly only the practical portions and postpon- 
ing the intricacieSsof compound proportion, permutation and 
the like, that not one in a thousand ever uses in the practical 
business of life, more time can be gained for reading, spelling, 
writing, the study and use of our own language, composition, 
at least in letter writing, and elementary lessons in the practical 
sciences, natural history, political economy, and the history of 
our own country. 



65 



WHAT BOYS AEE READING. 

A timely appeal to tlie public has just been made, bearing 
tbe signatures of eminent citizens of New Haven who repre- 
sent both political parties and the Baptist, Roman Catholic, 
Congregational and Episcopal churches. I welcome this warn- 
ing, as I have had occasion to observe widely the pernicious 
influence of bad books and papers. Finding ten years ago that 
such papers as the Boston Illustrated Police Neivs^ the New 
York National Police Gazette^ and Pays Poings were freely sold 
in the cars, I addressed a letter to the President or Superintend- 
ent of every railway in Connecticut asking if I might announce 
autlioritatively in my next Report that " the sale of immoral 
papers is not permitted in the cars or stations of your railway." 
Cordial replies came promptly from the officers of every rail- 
road of our State expressing their earnest purpose to do their 
part in the suppression of this great evil. One reply shows the 
spirit of all. "I fully appreciate your views and most heartily 
concur in your wish, and will do my utmost to prevent the 
circulation of such papers. " Obscene books, papers and pictures 
are the worst of outlaws. The most indecent of this class are 
sold clandestinely. But there are others, sold openly, like those 
named in the following " appeal," which though less filthy, are 
more corrupting, if not more infamous than the most lecherous 
issues of the Parisian press. The poison which nauseates by an 
overdose, may be its own antidote. Professing to be illustrated 
histories of the week, these papers are in fact chroniclers of, or 
contributors to, the bar-room and the brothel. The safety of 
our youth now demands the utmost effort for the exclusion of 
such contamination. In behalf of the children of the State, I 
earnestly invoke the aid and cooperation of all parents, the 
officers of justice, the public press, and of all good citizens, in 
efficient measures for the suppression of the evil so well set 
forth in the following appeal and extracts from the paper of 
Professor Sumner. 



66 



''"We desire to call attention to the cheap, trashy literature 
which is demoralizing the youth of our country. In this class 
we notice the paper named The Kew York Boys' WeeMy^ with a 
reputed circulation of 40,000, and The Boys of New York^ with 
a reputed circulation of 50,000. These papers contain stories 
of the most sensational and slangy character, judging by the 
titles, of which we name the following: 'Dashing Dick, King 
of the Highway,' ' Yankee Claude Duval, the Dashing Knight 
of the Eoad,' ' Corkey, or the Tricks and Travels of a Supe,' 
' Shorty, jr., or the Son of his Dad,' 'Bang Up, or the Boy 
Kanchero,' etc., etc. We see not one redeeming trait in these 
or other papers of this class. We are informed that many of 
the advertisements in their columns are of the most villainous 
kind. Will you not do what 3^ou can to warn your readers 
against the peril that besets our youth? We inclose Professor 
Sumner's article, reprinted from jScribner^s Monthly^ which we 
beg you to use according to your judgment in whole or in part. 

Our object is not to advertise any periodical in place of those 
we deprecate, but only to warn the public of a danger suspected 
by few and realized by fewer still. 

Noah Porter, Leonard Bacon, 

Theodore D. Woolsey, Francis Wayland, 
William M. Barbour, Hugh Carmody, 
James E. English, Edwin Harwood, 

Francis A. Walker." 



" Few gentlemen, who have occasion to visit news-offices, can 
have failed to notice the periodical literature for boys, which 
has been growing up during the last few years. The increase 
in the number of these papers and magazines, and the appear- 
ance, from time to time, of new ones, which, to judge by the 
pictures, are always worse than the old, seem to indicate that 
they find a wide market. Moreover, they appear not only 
' among the idle and vicious boys in great cities, but also among 
school-boys whose parents are careful about the influences 
brought to bear on their children. No student of social phe- 
nomena can pass with neglect facts of this kind, — so practical, 
and so important in their possible effects on society. 

These periodicals contain stories, songs, mock speeches, and 



67 



negro minstrel dialogues, — and nothing else. The literary 
material is either intensely stupid, or spiced to the highest de- 
gree with sensation. The stories are about hunting, Indian 
warfare, California desperado life, pirates, wild sea adventure, 
highwaymen, crimes and horrible accidents, horrors (tortures 
and snake stories), gamblers, practical jokes, the life of vaga- 
bond boys, and the wild behavior of dissipated boys in great 
cities. This catalogue is exhaustive. There are no other 
stories. The dialogue is short, sharp, and continuous. It is 
broken by the minimum of description and by no preaching. 
It is almost entirely in slang of the most exaggerated kind, and 
of every variety, — that of the sea, of California, and of the 
Bowery; of negroes, 'Dutchmen,* Yankees, Chinese, and In- 
dians, to say nothing of that of a score of the most irregular 
and questionable occupations ever followed by men. When 
the stories even nominally treat of school-life, they say nothing 
of school-life. There is simply a succession of practical jokes, 
mischief, outrages, heroic but impossible feats, fightmg, and 
horrors, but nothing about the business of school, any more 
than if the house in which the boys live were a summer board- 
ing-house. The sensational incidents in these stories are intro- 
duced by force, apparently for the mere purpose of producing 
a highly spiced mixture. 

One type of hero who figures largely in these stories is the 
vagabond boy, in the streets of a great city, in the Kocky 
Mountains, or at sea. Sometimes he has some cleverness in 
singing, or dancing, or ventriloquism, or negro acting, and he 
gains a precarious living while roving about. This vagabond 
life of adventure is represented as interesting and enticing, and, 
when the hero rises from vagabond life to flash life, that is 
represented as success. Kespectable home life, on the other 
hand, is not depicted at all, and is only referred to as stupid 
and below the ambition of a clever youth. Industry and econ- 
omy in some regular pursuit, or in study, are never mentioned 
at all. Generosity does not consist in even luxurious expend- 
iture, but in wasting money. The type seems to be that of the 
gambler, one day ' flush ' and wasteful, another day ruined and 
in misery. 

There is atiot-her type of boy who sometimes furnishes the 



68 



hero of a storj, but who also figures more or less in all of them. 
That is the imp of mischief, — the sort of boy who is an intoler- 
able nuisance to the neighborhood. The stories are told from 
the stand-point of the boy, so that he seems to be a fine fellow, 
and all the world, which is against him, is unjust and overbear- 
ing. His father, the immediate representative of society, exe- 
cutes its j udgments with the rod, which again is an insult to 
the high-spirited youth, and produces on his side, either open 
war, or a dignified retreat to some distant region. 

These stories are not markedly profane, and they are not 
obscene. They are indescribably vulgar. They represent boys 
as engaging all the time in the rowdy type of drinking. The 
heroes are either swaggering, vulgar swells, of the rowdy style, 
or they are in the vagabond mass below the rowdy swelL They 
are continually associating with criminals, gamblers, and low 
people who live by their wits. The theater of the stories is 
always disreputable. The proceedings and methods of persons 
of the criminal and disreputable classes, who appear in the sto- 
ries, are all described in detail. The boy reader obtains a theo- 
retical and literary acquaintance with methods of fraud and 
crime. Sometimes drunkenness is represented in its disgrace 
and misery, but generally drinking is represented as jolly and 
entertaining, and there is no suggestion that boys who act as 
the boys in these stories do ever have to pay any penalty for it 
in after life. The persons who are held up to admiration are the 
heroes and heroines of bar-rooms, concert saloons, variety thea- 
ters, and negro minstrel troupes. From the specimens which 
we have examined we may generalize the following in regard 
to the views of life which these stories inculcate, and the code 
of morals and manners which they teach : 

The first thing which a boy ought to acquire is physical 
strength for fighting purposes. The feats of strength performed 
by these youngsters in combat with men and animals are ridic- 
ulous in the extreme. In regard to details the supposed code 
of English brutality prevails, especially in the stories which 
have English local color, but it is always mixed with the code 
of the revolver, and, in many of the stories, the latter is taught 
in its fullness. These youngsters generally carry revolvers and 



69 



use them at their good discretion. Every 3'outh who aspires 
to manliness ought to get and csiviy a revolver. 

A boy ought to cheat the penurious father who does not give 
him as much money as he finds necessary, and ought to compel 
him to pay. A good way to force him to pay liberally, and at 
the same time to stop criticising his son's habits, is to find out 
his own vices (he always has some) and then to levy black-mail 
on him. Every boy, who does not want to be ' green ' and 
'soft,' ought to 'see the elephant.' All fine manly young fel- 
lows are familiar with the actors and singers at variety theaters, 
and the girl waiters at concert saloons. As to drinking, the 
bar-room code is taught. The boys stop in at bar-rooms all 
along the street, swallow drinks standing or leaning with rowdy 
grace on the bar. They treat and are treated, and consider it 
insulting to refuse or to be refused. The good fellows meet 
every one on a footing of equality — above all in a bar-room. 

Quiet home life is stupid and unmanly. Boys brought up 
in it never know the world or life. They have to work hard 
and to bow down to false doctrines which parsons and teachers 
in league with parents, have invented against boys. To become 
a true man, a boy must break with respectability and join the 
vagabonds and the swell mob. No fine young fellow, who 
knows life, need mind the law, still less the police. The latter 
are all stupid louts. If a boy's father is rich and he has money, 
he can easily find smart lawyers (advertisement gratis) who can 
get the boy out of prison, and will dine with him at Delmonico's 
afterward. The sympathies of a manly young fellow are with 
criminals against the law, and he conceals crime when he can. 
Whatever good or ill happens to a young man he should always 
be gay. The only ills in question are physical pain or lack of 
money. These should be borne with gayety and indifference, 
but should not alter the philosophy of life. 

As to the rod, it is not so easy to generalize. Teachers and 
parents, in these stories, act faithfully up to Solomon's precept. 
When a father flogs his son, the true doctrine seems to be that 
the son should run away and seek a life of adventure. When 
he does this he has no difficulty in finding friends, or in living 
by his wits, so that he makes money, and comes back rich and 
glorious, to find his father in the poor-house. 



70 



These periodicals seem to be intended for boys from twelve 
to sixteen years of age, althougli they often treat of older per- 
sons. Probably many boys outgrow them and come to see the 
folly and falsehood of them. It is impossible, however, that so 
much corruption should be afloat and not exert some influence. 
"We say nothing of the great harm which is done to boys of 
that age, by the nervous excitement of reading harrowing and 
sensational stories, because the literature before us only partici- 
pates in that harm with other literature of far higher preten- 
sions. But what we have said suffices to show that these papers 
poison boys' minds with views of life which are so base and 
false as to destroy all manliness and all chances of true success. 
How far they are read by boys of good home influences we are, 
of course, unable to say. They certainly are within the reach 
of all. They can be easil}^ obtained, and easily concealed, and 
it is a question for parents and teachers how far this is done. 
Persons tinder those responsibilities ought certainly to know 
what the character of this literature is." 



11 



WHAT SHOULD OUR BOYS EE AD? 

Teachers can largely determine the reading of their scholars' 
out of school. It is important not only to a-waken a love 
of books, but to guide in their selection and form a taste 
for profitable reading. Scholars should be encouraged to 
have some good book always at home, in which they read 
a little every day. In school they should be invited to 
tell what they have read. To give an epitome of one's reading 
is an admirable school exercise. The pupil will peruse a book 
with ten-fold greater interest, when expecting to epitomize his 
author before the school. As a drill of memory and in language 
it is a most useful exercise, and is one that is sure to interest 
as well as profit the school. Having experienced these advan- 
tages in my own teaching, and witnessed them in many schools, 
I strongly recommend this practice, already adopted by some, 
to all the teachers of Connecticut. Instead of giving here a list 
of books for all the youth of the State, I advise teachers to 
recommend well known works in adaptation to the age, taste 
and advancement of individual pupils, usually those which 
they themselves have read, that they may the better appreciate 
and criticise the epitomes of the same by the pupils. 

An eminent teacher recently asked a class of fifty-seven boys. 
What is the last book you have read? One answered ''I 
haven't read any lately," another, " I don't remember," " can't 
tell " said a third. But the great majority were able to give an 
account of their reading, which was most creditable to their 
teacher, evincing his wholesome influence over his pupils out- 
side of the school room. Twenty-seven had been reading 
works of history and biography, including Life and Times of 
Benjamin Franklin, Life of Prescott, Higginson's History of 
the United States, Irving's Washington, Lives of Cicero, Han- 
nibal, C^sar, Xerxes, Alexander, Ferdinand and Isabella. 
Three boys were reading Dickens' History of England and one 
was enjoying Bancroft's ten volume History of the United 



72 



States, another liad just read three volumes of Macaulaj's Es- 
says. Shakespeare, Bunyan, Bulwer, DeFoe, Jules Yerne and 
Oliver Optic had one reader each. What Career?, Avis, Mar- 
ble Fawn, History of Propellers, Management of Horses, Seven 
Oaks, Miss Miihlbach s Empress Josephine, Ways of the World, 
Half-Hour Natural Science Series, American Explorers, Little 
Men, Speke's Sources of the Kile, Wide Wide World, Wav- 
erly, Fortunes of Nigel and Quentin Durward were also named. 

I invite our teachers to test their scholars in the same way 
during the present 3^ear, and to send me lists of the books read 
by their pupils. With the cooperation of teachers and school 
officers we ma}^ learn what the youth of Connecticut are reading. 
This effort will enlist the attention of parents and secure their 
, aid in the selection of better books and periodicals for their 
i children, and thus check a growing evil and accomplish great 
■ good. Teachers should foster a taste for such choice literature, 
' that travels, histories and biographies, books of science, genu- 
ine poetry, essays and choice romances shall take the place 
of the "blood and thunder" stories and other emphatically 
weekly novelettes of the day. 

Social reading should also be encouraged. The industry 
in many a sewing circle has been enlivened by well selected 
reading by one of their number. The same genial influ- 
ence should often cheer the circle around the family hearth. 
" Eeading circles " ought to be maintained in every town, where 
selections in prose or poetry, often a play of Shakespeare, the 
several parts having been previously assigned, and made the 
subject of careful private study and drill, are rehearsed together. 
These Eeading Clubs, where each thoroughly studies his part 
or selection till he becomes so possessed of its thought and 
spirit as to render it in the best style he can command, not only 
cultivate the art of elocution, but improve the taste and develop 
a higher appreciation of the best authors. Aside from the edu- 
cational value of this class of evening schools, their social influ- 
ence is happy. Divided as the residents of our rural districts 
too often are, by party or sect, by prejudice or neighborhood 
difficulties, every influence tending to fraternize the people 
should be welcomed ; every association where they meet on 
common ground for mutual improvement, and where kindly 



73 



feeling and social amenities are cultivated, should be en- 
couraged. 

The teacher cannot awaken love of books unless he himself 
continues to be a student. Any one who thinks he knows 
enough to teach even the humblest class, should never profane 
the school room by his presence. One who has ceased to be a 
learner cannot be a good teacher. The more one has discovered, 
the more he wants to know. The truly learned man feels the 
greatness of his ignorance and the littleness of his knowledge 
as but a drop out of the boundless ocean of truth. It has 
been well said, "the greater the circle of our knowledge, the 
greater the horizon of ignorance that bounds it. The pride 
of wisdom therefore is the proof of folly." Arrogance and as- 
surance are not the fruits of true learning. Yet from the days 
of Johnson to Dickens " the school master " has been character- 
ized in our literature as magisterial, opinionated and dogmatical. 
Associated as teachers are with beginners, or at least inferiors 
in attainments, seldom called to the grapple of mind with mind 
as in forensic contests with equals or superiors, there is great 
danger of imbibing the spirit of conceit and dogmatism, even 
when only getting deeper in the old ruts. What is dryer than 
an old, opinionated, self-satisfied, unprogressive school master? 
He despises "all your new-fangled notions." He glories in the 
"good old ways." His fluent routine feeds his complacency, 
though it really enervates his own mind and stupefies his 
pupils. Whoever either in the college or primary school has 
ceased to learn, should by all means stop teaching, for children 
need impulse even more than instruction. Any one who no 
longer thirsts for higher knowledge, cannot fitly lead even the 
youngest to its fountain. As a teacher, one must be progressive, 
or cease to be at all. The mind that stagnates must soon retro- 
grade, and such a teacher would stultify rather than stimulate 
his class. Happily there are now many teachers worthy of 
their work, whose ideal is high, and who are enthusiastic in the 
life-long work of personal culture. The efficient cooperation of 
such teachers I confidently anticipate in the efforts now making 
to stimulate a taste for books, and aiding our youth in the 
selection of the best books. One who early acquires a taste 
for reading and a love of bpoks, will realize that his education 



74 



is only begun wlien his school days are ended. To complete it 
will be the aim and ambition of his life. Let his calling be 
what it may, with an insatiable desire for knowledge, he will 
find leisure for self -improvement. The many instances of self- 
educated men whose eminence and success are due to an early 
taste for reading, should be given to the boys who are just 
entering the active pursuits of life, and who are so apt to think 
that they can no longer find time for self-culture. But is the 
little leisure they have well improved? Should the evenings 
be idled away, because the days must be occupied with business 
or labor? The youth whose teachers have trained them to 
alwaj's have a good book at hand for odd moments, will enter 
the practical callings of life with a habit of inestimable import- 
ance. 



75 



COMPULSORY EDUCATION EST ElSTaLAND. 

My obseryations during the last year, both at home and 
abroad, refute the old objection to obligatory education, that 
"the laboring classes won't stand it." In the County and State 
Conventions of the Labor Unions recently held in Connecticut, 
resolutions have been adopted in favor of the rigid enforcement 
of the law for the prevention of illiteracy. Mixing much with 
the laboring classes for the purpose of promoting school attend- 
ance, I have been greatly encouraged by their growing appre- 
ciation of education, whether Americans, Germans, Swedes or 
Irish. In England the various labor organization^ earnestly 
advocate compulsory education. The opposition comes from 
the comparatively few land-holders, the politicians and large 
farmers. In Glasgow, where the coercive regime is in full 
vigor, but fifty-one penalties have been inflicted in three years. 
In Birmingham, where the proportion of illiteracy was far 
larger than in Glasgow, greater exertions have been requisite to 
vanquish the apathy of parents. In Scotland, education has 
long been well nigh universal, while the poorer classes in Eng- 
land and Wales were sunk in ignorance. Under the existing 
law, the regulation of attendance is left to the local School 
Boards. Recent interviews with prominent friends of educa- 
tion in England and Scotland, satisfied me that public senti- 
ment is rapidly growing in favor of making compulsion univer- 
sal in its application. I could learn of no signs of reaction in 
any town where it had been adopted, but was assured that in 
the School Boards of London, Glasgow, Manchester, Birming- 
ham, Sheffield, Leeds, and many other large towns, there is not 
now left a single opponent to this plan. Throughout Britain 
experience has converted many objectors to friends. 

Sir Charles Reed, President of the London School Board, 
gave me last summer some statements which happily illustrate 
the good influence of compulsory education in that great me- 
tropolis. The new system went into operation in 1871. The 



76 



school census then taken enumerated 574,693 children of school 
age, and needing elementary education. For these children 
only 262,259 school places were at that time provided, and 
there were 312,434 more children than places. Over two hun- 
dred new school houses have been provided since that date, 
and now the Board Schools and Voluntary Schools have ac- 
commodations for 505,323. The compulsory law has worked 
with little friction and marked success. As a result, there has 
already been a very considerable reduction in the cost of juve- 
nile crime and pauperism. The magistrates of London and 
the Commissioners of Police have all borne cordial testimony 
to the fact that there has been a great diminution of juvenile 
offenses, and that every gang of young thieves known to the 
police has been broken up. The Superintendent of the Hollo- 
way Prison says the juvenile criminals have yearly decreased, 
so that instead of 136 males and 21 females admitted in 1869, 
the numbers for the last year were only 28 males and no 
females. In 1871, Hon. W. E. Forster, the father of the new 
educational bill, said to me, " In America you can have little 
idea of our difficulty in dealing with these myriads of street 
Arabs in London, who are so degraded and ignorant that they 
and their parents alike can appreciate neither the evils of igno- 
rance nor the advantages of education." One of the inspect- 
ors now says, "These street Arabs sit side by side with the 
sons of industrious citizens, and so healthful is the tone of the 
school that complaints are seldom heard. These schools are of 
the deepest interest and first importance, receiving children 
from indigent and neglected homes, and supplying all that per- 
haps they will ever obtain of moral training and cultivation in 
head and heart. No one can continue to visit these schools 
and notice the sad state of these children at the outset without 
observing the gradual ameliorating effects of the care bestowed 
upon them." 

By invitation of Sir Charles Eeed, I witnessed in July last, 
the gathering of 5,000 of these children in Crystal Palace. 
The spectacle of so many children seated in ascending tiers in a 
semi-amphitheater near the great organ, was itself inspiring, 
and the grand choral singing, especially considering the brief 
period of their school attendance, was excellent. Besides the 



77 



5,000 singers, there was an enormous crowd of other children 
and their parents, the total number, said the President of the 
Board, was over 30,000. The Crystal Palace Company gave 
free admission to the children. Tom. Hughes, the President of 
the Company, made a Speech of cordial welcome to all, and 
congratulated and commended the School Board that had 
already accomplished so noble a work. The main speech was 
given by Lord Sanden, a single sentence of which indicates 
the moral influence already exerted by the London schools. 
" When we think of the future of the children before us and 
of the various lots in life which will become theirs, it is im- 
possible not to be deeply affected, or to look at these children 
without being grateful to Sir Charles Reed and his colleagues, 
for bringing these children into school, who might otherwise 
have been left in the streets, a plague to their parents and a 
danger hereafter to the State." Similar facts might be given 
as to the good influence of compulsory education in many 
other cities of England, and especially in Birmingham, the 
head-quarters of the National Educational League, — an associa- 
tion embracing such men as George Dixon, M. P., and Br. 
R. W. Dale, — which has been active and influential in the 
advocacy of educational reforms. Visiting most of the schools 
of that city last summer, I gained ample proofs of the good 
effects of obligatory instruction, as there rigidly applied. 

A striking conversion occurred in the case of the late Canon 
Kingsley. Though he long took a lively interest in the im- 
provement of the working classes, an interest deepened by his 
service as government inspector of schools, he at first opposed 
obligatory education as un-English and offensive to the inde- 
pendent spirit of his countrymen. On finding that the working 
people favored compulsory attendance, his objections vanished. 

A still more remarkable change has occurred in the views of 
Mr. Forster, the father of the Educational Act of 1870. He 
then opposed all efforts to make compulsion universal. Per- 
mission only was given to local Boards to adopt coercion. 
Though convinced of the justness of this measure, he argued 
that the people are not prepared for it, and that outcries of 
"un-English," "arbitrary," ''tyrannical," "invasion of one's 
home," "usurpation of parental rights," and all the easy clap- 



78 



trap of demagogues, would create a reaction, and therefore he 
did not ask for a general compulsory law. It was said, no 
matter what can be done in Prussia, or even in Switzerland, 
the people of England have too much independence, too much 
aversion to any semblance of tyranny, ever to submit to com- 
pulsory education. Mr. Forster now admits that he had no 
expectation that the town population would, to so great an 
extent, adopt the principle of compulsory education. Every 
town in England with 20,000 inhabitants, which has a School 
Board, has adopted it. The permissive provision for local 
compulsion was ingrafted in this bill with little faith that it 
would be ratified and applied in any of the large towns. But 
the people have surprised Parliament. In March last Mr. 
Forster said in the House of Commons : " Almost the entire 
town population of England is now under compulsory educa- 
tion. And there is no sign of reaction. If compulsion had 
worked with hardship on the people, nothing was so easy as 
to revert to the former state of things. If a motion were now 
made antagonistic to this principle of compulsion, it would not 
have a single supporter in the School Boards of London^ Manches- 
ter^ Birmingham^ or any other large town. The school attend- 
ance in those towns where it has been made compulsory, has 
been improved 80 per cent. Leeds, for example, had almost 
solved the problem of getting hold of all the children. The 
attendance there has doubled by compulsion. The same has 
been done at Sheffield. At Stockport they had increased the 
average attendance until there were less than 2|- per cent, of 
the children between 5 and 16 who were not at school, and 
some of them were excusable on account of mental or physical 
inability. The right to compel a father to feed and clothe his 
child is admitted, and we have now arrived at a point of civili- 
zation at which we can declare that it is his duty to see that he 
is educated. The sole meaning of compulsion is that this is 
the duty of every parent, and that it is the business of the 
State to secure the performance of that duty, and if the parent 
is disabled by poverty, then to help him from local rates or 
imperial funds. It has been said, we must wait for public 
opinion. Well, public opinion has declared itself, for every 
town that by law was able to do so, has put the compulsory 



79 



system in force. The fact is, that the arguments in favor of 
compulsion are overwhelming, and Parliament should now 
make compulsion universal. It is admitted, you cannot extend 
compulsion without producing some hardship, and bringing a 
bitter pinch to some poor widow who depended on her chil- 
dren's labor. No great reform can be effected without cases of 
individual hardship, but in the long run these alterations would 
be productive of magnificent results for the whole population." 

In Connecticut, the State Board of Education invite the 
cooperation of all parents and school officers in their efforts 
to promote the observance of the law for obligatory educa- 
tion. The gain in school attendance since the adoption of our 
compulsory law shows the wisdom and value of the enactment. 
This law has met the sanction of the people, irrespective of 
party or sect. The Labor Unions, convinced that it is spe- 
cially fitted to promote the interests of the working classes, have 
repeatedly passed resolutions in favor of its rigid enforcement. 
Many poor parents have learned that their ignorance is one 
cause of their poverty and that, as education is essential to 
thrift and prosperity, ignorance should not be allowed to per- 
petuate indigence. We use the right to enforce mainly as an 
argument to persuade — an authoritative appeal to parental 
pride and foresight. We so press the advantages of education 
that attendance may be held a privilege rather than a legal ne- 
cessity. 

But when reason and persuasion fail, coercion stands in their 
stead. The law protects helpless childhood whose rights are 
sacred. It recognizes the claims of the humblest child to an 
education, as that which the State cannot neglect without det- 
riment to itself and harm to a human soul. 'Not even by 
omission may the State doom a single child to ignorance and 
its manifold evils. The temporary hardships to families by 
loss of children's wages, occasionally incident to the observance 
of this law, will be counterbalanced a thousand fold by the 
permanent benefit of both parents and children, while its neg- 
lect would inflict lasting evil upon them and the whole com- 
munity. 

Attendance upon an evening school merely, or irregular in- 
struction at home does not meet the demands of the law, which 



80 



requires that such instruction be regularly and thoroughly 
given. 

Our law in regard to non-attendance applies not to manu- 
facturers only, but to merchants, mechanics, farmers and all 
employers of children. The manufacturers, as a rule, cheer- 
fully comply with the law. There is need of watchfulness in 
reference to the larger number who each employ one or more 
children in shops, or stores, on the farm or in the family. All 
persons who know of any instance of the employment of chil- 
dren under fourteen years of age, who have not attended school 
the time required by law, are requested to send information of 
such fact to the office of the State Board of Education, giving 
the names and location of the employers of the children and 
of the parents. A journey to the remotest part of the State will 
be amply compensated, if, thereby, a single child can be brought 
to school. 

The needs of neglected children still occupy much time in 
public addresses and personal labors. The good results 
already accomplished furnish ample encouragement for the vig- 
orous prosecution of this work. During the last year the agent 
of the Board has visited a larger number of families than in 
any former year. As the result of these visits to the homes 
of neglected children, nearly three hundred such children have 
been led to attend school. Nearly ninety -five per cent, of our 
children are now reported as in schools of all kinds — a larger 
percentage than in any other State in America, when the basis 
of enumeration is taken into account. In Connecticut, the 
enumeration includes all children between four and sixteen 
years of age. The gift from the State Treasury and School 
Fund of about two dollars and a half per scholar, ensures the 
fullest returns. In Massachusetts the enumeration is from five 
to fifteen. We discourage attendance under five, and the law 
authorizes towns to exclude all under five. There is, therefore, 
reason for congratulation on the efficient working of our com- 
pulsory law. 



SCHOOLS AND COMMUNISM. 



In 1868 a prominent plea against Free Schools was the argu- 
ment that "the system is communistic in its principle and ten- 
dency. Establish free schools and you encourage a demand for 
free food, free clothes, free shoes, and free homes." Professor 
Faucett, liberal, fair and progressive as he is, urged the same 
objection in Parliament, saying, during the discussion of the 
new "Elementary Education Act," which was passed in 1870, 
"If the demand for free schools w^ere not resisted, encourage- 
ment would be given to Socialism in its most baneful form." 

Time tests all theories, better than arguments. In Connecti- 
cut a decade of free schools has witnessed no new tendencies to 
Communism. The general intelligence of New England was 
one obvious cause of its exemption from the communistic rail- 
way conflicts in the summer of 1877. The sober second 
thought prevailed here, while madness ruled the hour else- 
where. The last election in Connecticut showed plainly the 
popular dread of the socialistic tendencies and dogmas, which 
were repudiated by both the leading political parties. In Mas- 
sachusetts, where free schools have been 'maintained for more 
than two hundred years, there is as little Socialism as in any 
land in the world. Indeed, throughout New England, there is 
no tendency to Communism among the descendants of the gen- 
uine New England stock. The minimum that exists is limited 
to a small portion of the foreign element. Though curiosity 
attracted crowds to hear Dennis Kearney last autumn, it is due 
to free schools and the consequent intelligence of the people, 
that his communistic tirades disgusted all classes and 
prompted the candidate who first sought his alliance to dis- 
own his dogmas and disfellowship him. 

I find among all classes, employers and employes, in the fac- 
tories and on the farms, a growing distrust, not to say detesta- 
tion, of Communism. The mad outcry of the Internationals, 
"Equality of conditions," "Capital is the enemy of labor," 
finds no response from the intelligent laborers of Connecticut. 
Thanks to our schools, they know that the condition of the 
x. 



82 



operative improves with the increase of industrial capital, which 
always befriends labor, when it multiplies the opportunities 
of education and profitable employment. Nothing helps the 
laborer more than that education which gives him both the 
desire and the power to better his condition, to improve first 
himself and then his home and household. 

As a precaution against the communistic tendencies which 
now agitate and alarm Germany and other portions of Europe, 
and find here their fiercest advocates among the refugees thence 
escaped to our shores, the general principles underlying this 
subject should be studied by our teachers and presented in oral 
lessons in our schools. A few simple school talks on this 
theme might forestall much mischief in coming years. The 
intelligent workmen who by industry and economy are enabled 
to own their homes, however humble, or indeed to own any- 
thing, cannot be fooled by that insane crusade against capital, 
which really means wages without work, or which lets the lazy 
and profligate share equally with the industrious and frugal. 
The equality of conditions of which they dream, would be the 
low level of a common barbarism. Even enforced equality of 
wages lessens the motives to industry, skill and fidelity, and 
restrains the freedom of competition. Once applied, these 
notions would destroy not only capital but the motives and 
means of its future increase and protection. Destroy capital, 
and labor would suffer first and most. Capital and labor, there- 
fore, are not enemies. It is only ignorance and prejudice that 
find any necessary opposition between the two. There should 
be kindness and sympathy between the employer and the 
employed. There need be no alienation between the rich and 
the poor. There should be no tyranny of capital over labor, 
nor hostility of labor to capital. The capitalist should fully 
understand the trials of the laborer's lot, and strive to amelio- 
rate his condition, and the operative should know the risks, 
anxieties and conditions of success on the part of the manufac- 
turer. There should be liberal pay on the one side, and fair 
profits on the other. The interests of both classes are bound 
together. If either one is harmed, the other must ultimately 
suffer. Certainly the laborer cannot long suffer in health, edu- 
cation or pay, without harm to the employer, and large losses 



83 



to employers inevitably extend to the operatives, Thiey are 
copartners, and cannot afford to be antagonists. Capital is as 
dependent on labor as labor is on capital, and only as both 
work in harmony, can the highest good of each be secured. 
Indeed, labor is both superior and prior to capital, and alone 
originally produces capital. Many a penniless laborer, because 
well educated, frugal and industrious, has become an independ- 
ent capitalist. Our most successful manufacturers have toiled 
up from penury to afHuence. This aspiration may stimulate 
every one who is educated enough to combine skill with labor. 

Communism is an exotic in this land. It does not easily 
take root in our soil, and the climate is uncongenial. Its chief 
advocates are homeless foreigners, even the immigrants long 
resident here have become so schooled by public sentiment 
and by our free institutions, as to be well nigh assimilated and 
Americanized. 

Schools and the diffusion of property are our safeguards 
against Socialistic extremes. John Adams well said, "The 
ownership of land is essential to industrial thrift and to national 
security and strength and prosperity." Switzerland, with insti- 
tutions as free as ours, is safe from Communism, for two rea- 
sons — the maintenance of free schools, and the general owner- 
ship of land. The Internationals may meet in free Switzer- 
land, and nobody is frightened or disturbed by their vagaries. 
Germany has education, but not an equal distribution of land. 
Her vast standing army, consuming without producing, with 
its enormous expenses and exactions, has created a great revul- 
sion of feeling among the people. The glory of conquest and 
the untold milliards of the French indemnity mainly expended 
on new fortifications and military equipments, do not atone for 
the mourning and bereavement brought to so many now deso- 
late homes, the heavy burden of taxation, the dread of con- 
scription, the fear of new complications and wars, and the inex- 
orable demand that every boy shall spend three weary years of 
service in the camp. Myriads of families with boys approach- 
ing the military age, have emigrated to other lands to escape 
this dreaded conscription. 

In France the home of Communism has always been in Paris. 
The horrors of the Commune in 1871 proved suicidal to the sys- 



84 



tern. Even Paris learned then a lesson not likely to be forgotten. 
But the great body of the French people, even then, had little 
sympathy with communistic doctrines, and to-day the French 
nation, with her 5,000,000 of land-owners, is strongly the 
other way. Here lie her strength and security. To illustrate 
the happy influence of this wide diffusion of landed property, 
Michelet describes a French peasant walking out of a Sunday, 
in his clean linen and unsoiled blouse, surveying fondly his 
little farm. His face is illumined as he thinks these acres are 
his own, from the surface of the globe to its center, and that 
the air is his own from the surface up to the seventh heaven. 
He is there alone — not at work, not to keep off interlopers, but 
solely to enjoy the feeling of ownership, and to look upon him- 
self as a member of responsible society. Thus in all lands and 
among all peoples, " the magic of property turns sand into 
gold." 

In the United States there are nearly 8,000,000 farmers with 
farms, averaging 158 acres each, besides a large number who 
own their dwellings and house-lots. These form the grand 
army of the Eepublic — each a volunteer, equipped and ready to 
strike down Communism, wherever its hydra head may appear. 
Let even the Socialistic leaders, whom Bismarck has banished, 
once learn here to till their own acres, and they will be con- 
verted to the true faith — of the sacred rights of property. 



SCHOOLS AND PAUPEKISM. 



Ten years ago strenuous objections were made to free schools, 
as being a charity tending to pauperize the people, a kind of 
alms that no man could accept without impairing his manli- 
ness and self-respect. But they are now recognized as the peo- 
ple's schools by right, not favor, and prized as never before. 
Instead of being a charity, tending to demean and pauperize 
its recipients, all find themselves recognized as equal partners 
in the concern, having an equal voice in selecting the mana- 
gers, in raising the funds, or in criticising the methods adopted. 
Thus the school is no more a charity than is the free public 
road or bridge. Help in schooling is really help towards doing 
without help — towards self-reliance. ' In Europe, those who 
express the greatest apprehension that the independence of the 
working classes would be destroyed by free schools, evince 
little desire to develop that genuine independence which true 
education fosters. In lands where the insolence of office is 
proverbial, they make it a prominent lesson to every child to 
"order himself reverently and lowly to all his betters, and to 
submit to the humors of my Lords." The people whose inde- 
pendence" is so carefully guarded, are kept under various petty 
and vexatious restraints. Says Francis Adams, one of the 
most earnest advocates of free schools in Great Britain, " There 
is a large class in England, from whom we hear most about 
preserving the independence of the poor, who have always 
been opposed to measures intended to enlarge popular freedom. 
They find a personal gratification in the exercise of petty char- 
ity and the power to deal out to the working-classes little doles 
such as are provided for the remission and payment of school 
fees. ISTotwithstanding their homilies about parental independ- 
ence and responsibility, they possess the spirit of patronage so 
long fostered by the social conditions of the country, which 
has done much to keep so many of our people in a state of 
miserable dependence and subjection. When their system of 
alms-giving can be carried on at the public expense, their zest 
is no doubt greater and they will not willingly surrender any 



86 



power which still has force to pluck ' the slavish hat from the 
villager's head.' This class now stands in the way of the com- 
plete realization of the free school system in England." 

The vast pauperism of England, especially among the farm 
laborers, is largely due to the want of free schools. The facts 
and figures, both in regard to illiteracy and pauperism are 
appalling. The saddest sight to me in England strangely con- 
trasted with her glories and beauties many and great, of which 
every Englishman is justly proud, was the low and wretched 
condition of her illiterate masses. Lest any just statement 
from an alien may seem exaggerated, I will quote from those 
to the manor born, for these facts from the lips of Englishmen, 
prove the evils of ignorance, if not the value of universal edu- 
cation. Rev. Dr. J. H. Riggs of London, who, in his zeal to 
prove our free schools a failure, quotes my description* of a few 
of our worst school-houses and poorest district schools, as if 
they were of general significance, and proclaims that ten weeks 
serves for the training of teachers in the Normal School of 
Connecticut, and that some of the schools of Maine are kept 
open but three or four weeks in the year, with kindred exag- 
gerations and caricatures, unworthy of reply, and who finds 
almost everything English superior to anything American, is 
compelled to say, "English pauperism is a problem and a por- 
tent which seldom makes a due impression on an Englishman, 
Its monstrous character and dimensions are so familiar to us 
that they seldom strike us as monstrous. This vast and com- 
plex evil, this ulcer in the body politic, in its character and 
extent in this country, is absolutely a unique fact, because 
there is nothing comparable with it in the world besides. The 
number of persons annually in receipt of pauper relief is 
upwards of a million. The annual cost of poor relief is 
£7,886,724 (nearly $40,000,000). Abjectness and reckless- 
ness form the main element of the pauper's home. His cot- 
tage may consist of three rooms — the common room filled with 
litter and discomfort, and two bed rooms for all the inmates, 
parents and children, lads and lasses and often a male lodger, 
so that neatness and decency are .precluded. Too often the 
cottage is even worse, a wretched double cell, where penury 
* As found in several Reports of the Board of Education. 



87 



cowers, chastity can "hardly survive, and female delicacy must 
be unknown, the house only a shelter, full of cumber and litter. 
Such are the homes of • the majority of our English peasantry 
in the southern, western and south middle districts, and of 
many in most parts of England and in wide districts of Scot- 
land and Wales. Such is the condition of the pauperized peas- 
ants, not as poets have painted, England's glory, but her 
reproach." Eev. James Martineau says : " The social discrep- 
ancies which disfigure and affect society have here assumed a 
monstrous and fearful character. Our country is a vast conge- 
ries of exaggerations. Enormous wealth and saddest poverty, 
sumptuous idleness and unrewarded toil, princely provision for 
learning and the most degrading ignorance, a large amount of 
laborious philanthropy but a larger of unconquered misery and 
sin terrify us with their dreadful contrasts of light and shade. 
It is appalling to think of the moral cost by which England has 
become materially great. Where is the laborer by whose 
hand the soil has been tilled? In a cabin, with his children, 
where the domestic decencies cannot be. I know not which is 
the most heathenish, the guilty negligence of our lofty men, or 
the fearful dei'gradation of the low." 

John Bright says : " Fearful suffering exists among the rural 
laborers in almost every part of this kingdom. What wretched, 
uncared for, untaught brutes, in helpless stolid ignorance, are 
the people who raise the crops on which we live, and what dirt, 
vice and misery in the houses where seven or eight persons of 
both sexes are penned up together in one rickety, foul, vermin- 
haunted bed-room — their wages reduced to the very lowest 
point at which their lives can be kept in them ! They are 
heart-broken,, spirit-broken, despairing men — reduced to such 
brutality, recklessness, audacity of vice and extreme helpless- 
ness that they have no aspirations to better their condition. 
Accustomed to this from their youth, they can see nothing in 
the future which can afford them a single ray of hope. As 
the rural laborer looks longingly up the social ladder of ranks, 
the first six or eight steps are broken out, and there seems to 
him no chance to span the chasm." 

J. Scott Eussell said ten years ago, " Something must be done, 
or our working classes will be grievously wronged and the 



88 



whole nation suffer. Poor England, standing by idle, is too 
late. Her workingmen, grown up uneducated, cannot now be 
educated, are too old to learn. They have lost a generation. 
Where was the fault? where the blame? Why did not our 
statesmen and aristocracy, already provided with special uni- 
versities and schools for their own training, foresee that our 
trade was going away to more skilled nations, and warn us in 
time? The contrast between England and Switzerland is this; 
England spends more than five times as much on pauperism 
and crime as she does on education, and Switzerland spends 
seven times as much on education as she does on pauperism 
and crime." 

It was in view of startling facts and statements like these 
from her own countrymen that England organized in 1870 an 
efficient system of public education. It is a striking fact that 
the latest statistics show a great diminution of both pauperism 
and crime. Instead of a million of paupers in 1870, the num- 
ber returned January, 1878, was 726,000.* The cost of juvenile 
crime and pauperism has been remarkably reduced. The 
London Police Commissioners testify to a great diminution of 
juvenile offences and affirm that every gang of juvenile thieves 
known to them has been broken up. Even the adult popula- 
tion has been reached and elevated in some degree through 
their children. New hope and ambition have come to many 
an illiterate farm laborer, himself born to despair, by reason of 
ignorance born to helplessness and hopelessness, as he finds, 
though a thing unknown and undreamed of before, his children 
at school, and hence sees dawning upon them better prospects 
and possibilities than ever fell to his hard lot. The hopes cher- 
ished for children have thus cheered many a humble cottage. 

In striking contrast to the depressed condition of the farm 
laborer in his own land it is interesting to see the picture of the 
New England farmer drawn by Kev. Dr. E. W. Dale, of 
Birmingham, in an address at Canonbury, England, January 
17, 1879. When traveling in this country, he frequently ex- 
pressed his surprise and admiration in view of the intelligence 
and independence of the farmers of New England. 

* The unprecedented financial embarrassments now experienced in England 
will no doubt swell the next returns. 



89 



After remarking tliat for a century and a half the Puritan 
colonists had been left practically undisturbed by any foreign 
element, Mr. Dale proceeded to speak of the type of character 
which had been developed in Kew England and of the present 
social condition of the people. " From the 21,000 persons who, 
after five generations, were found in those States, descendants 
numbering at least four millions might be reckoned. At the 
present moment no 'population on the face of the earth enjoyed 
equal prosperity. Wealth luas more equally distributed than in 
any other community ; and the real and personal estate, liable to 
assessment, now averaged nearly £240 per head for the inhab- 
itants, or £1,150 for each family, reckoning the family at five 
persons. The New England farmer had from the first adopted 
the belief that the way to fight the devil was hy the school and the 
churchy and that belief had been thoroughly and consistently 
acted upon. The influence of this vigorous race upon the 
United States, as a whole, had been immense. It was they 
who had been the great pioneers in the development of the 
resources of the country. It was they, chiefly, who had built 
Chicago, and who rebuilt it, after it had been destroyed by fire, 
with a quickness and splendor which rivalled the achievements 
described in the pages of romance. From the farm houses of 
New England had sprung many of America's noblest orators, 
most learned theologians, and greatest statesmen and philan- 
thropists, and in the future the same people would contribute 
largely to the stability and greatness of their country. The 
history of these colonies, as contrasted with the history of other 
colonies, was an illustration of the true path of national great- 
ness." 

This remarkable contrast between the farm laborers of En- 
gland and New England as described by English writers 
furnishes a demonstration of the economy and value of the 
school system so long neglected there and maintained here. 
The earnest appeals of Joseph Arch, John Bright, Dr. Dale 
and others in behalf of the farm laborers of England, have 
awakened general sympathy, advanced their wages, and amel- 
iorated their condition. 



NATIONAL SCHOOLS. 



" Americans have no Kaiional System of Education," is the 
slur one often hears in Europe. To this criticism, my ready 
answer v\^as, we need none and are fully determined to have 
none. The maintenance and control of schools has never been 
the aim of our National Grovernment. 

Oar local independence and repugnance to federal interfer- 
ence and our complete State sovereignty in educational mat- 
ters, is an enigma to Europeans, being in marked contrast to 
their traditions and usages. In England, for example, the 
School Board of any town or city may not select a site, 
build a school house, or prescribe the amount of a school fee 
■without the sanction of the National Educational Department. 
But the complete decentralization of the American school 
system, though a point of weakness in European eyes, is, in 
fact, a prime source of its strength. The fact that our Schools 
are wholly in the hands of the people, supported by the funds 
they raise, controlled by officers chosen by them and responsi- 
ble to them, is a leading element of their prosperity. Though 
certain bills lately introduced into Congress indicate that a 
few would w^elcome European centralization and control, the 
general public sentiment of the country has so long been 
growing in favor of the unfettered working of State systems, 
that this has now become our settled policy, which no lobbj^ in 
Washington can change if it would, and should not if it could. 

If a strong central government be essential for an ignorant 
nation, an intelligent people can govern themselves. In Amer- 
ica, the success of schools in each State will depend upon the 
intelligence and consequent appreciation of its people. One of 
the worst legacies left by slavery is that of ignorance, and con- 
sequent indifference, to schools, or rather of insensibility to the 
evils of illiteracy or to the advantages of education. Shall the 
admitted school destitution of the South, or of some new 
Western States, be promptly removed hy federal agency, or 
more gradually supplanted by developing a proper local public 
sentiment. In the past, states and nations have been slow in 



91 



learning the lesson that alike to individuals and peoples, igno- 
rance means waste and weakness, if not pauperism and crime, 
and that education tends to economy, thrift and virtue. 

But there is a great acceleration in the working of moral 
and intellectual forces so that now in a decade, sometimes in a 
single j^ear, are accomplished broader results than formerly in a 
century. The day for coercion and dictation is passing. The 
growing assimilation and power of public sentiment is felt the 
world over. It has broken down the walls of China, the isola- 
tion of Japan, the serfdom of Eussia, the slavery of America, 
and is now rapidly relaxing the grasp of tyranny even in that 
center of oriental despotism, Turkey. But nowhere else is 
public sentiment so supreme in its influence as in America, 
and never before has that sentiment been so strong in favor of 
the support of free public schools as to-day. 

A striking illustration, both of the difference and power of 
public sentiment, was furnished more than a century ago by 
the replies sent by two American colonies to questions put by 
the English Commissioners for Foreign Plantations. The Grov- 
ernor of Virginia replied, " 1 thank Grod we have no free 
schools or printing presses, and I hope we shall not have these 
hundred years.'' The Governor of Connecticut answered, 
" One-fourth the annual revenues of the Colony is laid out in 
maintaining free schools for the education of our children." 
Accordingly, till after the late civil war, Yirginia had no gen- 
eral public school system. Thomas Jefferson ])repared with 
his own hand a bill for a free school system, of which he said, 
" By this bill, the people will be qualified to understand their 
rights and to maintain them, and to exercise with intelligence 
their parts in self-government. Provided for all children 
alike, rich and poor, the expenses of these schools will be 
borne by the inhabitants of each county, in proportion to 
their general tax-rates, and all this will be effected without the 
violation of a single natural right of any individual citizen." 
Jefferson caused the words, "Founder of the University" to 
be inscribed on his tombstone, but he placed a far higher esti- 
mate on free schools than on "superior education." Though 
defeated in this cherished plan, he defended it to the last, and 
said shortly before his death, " Were it necessary to give up 



92 



either tbe Primaries, or the University, I would rather abandon 
the last, because it is safer to have a whole people respectably 
enlightened, than a few in a high state of science, and the 
many in ignorance. The advantages of popular education are 
above all estimate. The objects should be to give every citi- 
zen the information he needs for the transaction of his own 
business, enabling him to calculate for himself and express and 
preserve his ideas, his contracts and accounts in writing ; to 
improve by reading, his morals and his faculties ; to under- 
stand his duties to his neighbor and country, and to discharge 
with competence the functions confided to him by either ; to 
know his rights and exercise with order and justice those he 
retains ; to choose with discretion the fiduciary of those he 
delegates, and to notice their conduct with diligence, candor 
and judgment, and, in general, to observe with intelligence and 
faithfulness all his social relations. All the States but our own 
are sensible that knowledge is power. We are sinking into the 
barbarism of our Indian aborigines, and expect, like them, to 
oppose by ignorance the overwhelming mass of light and science 
by which we shall be surrounded. Surely Governor Clinton's 
display of the gigantic efforts of New York in education, will 
stimulate the pride as well as the patriotism of our Legislature 
to look to the reputation and safety of their own State, to res- 
cue it from the degradation of becoming the Barbary of the 
Union and of falling into the ranks of our own negroes. To 
that condition it is fast sinking." How different would have 
been the history of Virginia had she heeded the wise counsel 
of this, her most eminent and far-seeing statesman? To the 
lasting harm of that State a different sentiment prevailed, so 
that as late as I860, a leading Virginia paper said, " We have 
got to hating everything with the prefix free^ from free negroes 
down and up through the whole catalogue, free farms, free 
labor, free society, free will, free thinking, free children and 
FREE SCHOOLS — all belonging to the same brood of damnable 
sins. But the worst of all these abominations is the modern 
system of free schools. The New England system of free 
schools has been the prolific source of the infidelities and trea- 
sons that have turned her cities into Sodoms and Gomorrahs, 
and her land into the common nestling place of howling Bed- 



93 



lamites. We abominate tlie system, because the schools are 
free." The long neglect of public schools so manifestly checked 
the growth and prosperity of the Old Dominion, notwith- 
standing her vast natural resources, and created so marked a 
contrast between her and other States far less favored in all the 
elements of material prosperity, that the logic of events has at 
last swept away these objections and converted old opponents 
to friends and supporters of free schools. At length Virginia 
rejoices in a free public school system. The progress of her 
public schools since the war is remarkable, accomplished in the 
face of prejudice, ignorance, and great financial embarrass- 
ments, for Virginia had her full share in the loss of over 
"three thousand millions of dollars sunk by the Southern 
States by the war," an amount larger than all the property of 
New England. To the question. How can schools be organized 
for the Southern States, without Federal aid or interference? 
the answer is, Look at Virginia, especially the schools of 
Richmond, Petersburg, Lynchburg, Staunton and Norfolk. 
Public sentiment there has been revolutionized. The common 
schools are growing in favor. Prejudice, opposition and penu- 
riousness of course still exist, but are evidently waning. I in- 
spected most of the schools of Richmond with as much delight 
as surprise, alike in view of the interest of the pupils, the cul- 
ture of the teachers and the excellence of the schools. Private 
schools have greatly diminished and the children of the 
rich generally attend the public schools. Considered as the 
growth of eight years, the Virginia system is a most gratifying 
work. In the light of such facts, and in view of the rapid 
working of intellectual forces in this age and country, and the 
growing power of public sentiment, shall the most illiterate 
portions of our land be reached by National Schools supported 
by National aid and in any way controlled by a National De- 
partment? Shall the National Bureau of Education become 
a Federal Department, enlarged and authorized to organize and 
maintain a National University — or, with still greater expan- 
sion, empowered to establish schools and distribute the income 
from the sale of public lands, whether in proportion to existing 
illiteracy, school attendance, or the length and grade of the 
schools maintained? 



94 



Hitherto the National Bureau of Education has been simply 
advisory. It has, and it was intended to have, no authority. 
As an agency for collecting and disseminating needful informa- 
tion, it has already done great good, and promises to be stiil 
more useful in the future. But the aittempt to organize a 
National University, support 5nd direct local schools, or in 
any way interfere with State systems, would end its useful- 
ness, if not end itself. Every true friend of this Bureau 
should protest against any such " enlargement of the field of 
its operations." The principle of State independence is too 
firmly fixed in the faith of all classes to brook any federal 
interference in school matters, even in the States or Terri- 
tories most destitute and backward in education. In an ill- 
conditioned community like that in New Mexico for example, 
still Mexican in their traditions, sentiments and peoples, juxta- 
posed, but not blended with the heterogeneous elements of a 
swarming immigration from all parts of the country, not to say 
of the world, American ideas and institutions are yet in their 
rudimentary forms and earlier stages of development. Shall a 
Federal Bureau, at once in European style, enforce there its best 
plans of public schools, or leave them bj^ a slower, surer, and 
more healthful process, to work out their own salvation ? As 
the schools of every community answer to local public opin- 
ion, their success must depend an the sympathy and apprecia- 
tion of the people. Pablic sentiment is a growth, not the 
creature of power made to order of any sort or size, as some 
have talked of " fiat money." 



DECENNARY OF FREE SCHOOLS. 



The free school system of Conoecticut has now had a trial 
of ten years and is no longer an experiment. This " new 
law " was so radical in its character as to meet general opposi- 
tion when first proposed in 1867. During the next year there 
was so great a change in public sentiment that it was enacted 
with great unanimity by the General Assembly of 1868. The 
struggle whicli this system had to wage for its existence is 
over, for it has been amply ratified by the people. The 
gauge of public interest is the increased burden of taxation 
which the people of Connecticut have chosen to bear, for 
school taxes are self-imposed. The amount raised by taxa- 
tion for schools ten years ago was $628,152.12. The amount 
raised by State, town and district taxation last year was 
$1,252,248.63, or about double the amount reported in 1868. 

The enemies of free schools have either been converted or 
learned the futility of open opposition. Dissentients are still 
found whose sympathy is needed to give the highest efficiency 
to the system. As the condition of the schools in each dis- 
trict answers largely to local public sentiment, the cooperation 
of every parent and citizen is essential to the fullest success. 

A brief review of the history and results of the free school 
system furnishes encouragement to its friends, and presents 
facts fitted to satisfy the minds of all honest doubters. Con- 
vinced that the rate-bill was wrong in principle and harmful in 
practice I directed my earliest efforts, on entering the service 
of the State, to secure its repeal. During the session of the 
Legislature for 1867, the Joint Standing Committee on Edu- 
cation finally consented to recommend a bill for free schools, 
though with little faith in the measure and no expectation of 
carrying it. As the bill met no favor in either House, out of 
courtesy to its author, it was referred to the next General 
Assembly. During the next year the subject was fully dis- 
cussed in numerous meetings in all parts of the State, the 
Secretary giving two hundred and six lectures on this and 
kindred topics. 



96 



Many sincere friends of education, deprecating these efforts, 
gave faithful warning as to their certain failure. The subject 
was freely discussed also in the press, and brought very promi- 
nently before the people. The sentiment was widely pro- 
claimed that it is the duty and interest of the State to furnish 
substantially equal common school privileges to the children 
of all classes. Self-protection was claimed to be the right of 
the government. For this purpose it maintains armies and 
navies. But safer and better every way than forts and fleets, 
indispensable as they may be, better for its peace and securit}^, 
its prosperity and protection, is universal education. 

Comparatively few now press the objection which was 
widely urged ten years ago, viz: "It is unjust to tax me for 
the education of other people's children. I have none. Let 
those who have, pay the cost of their schooling." This objec- 
tion is founded on a false theory of government. The State 
justly claims a right to its citizens for its defense, a right to 
lay its equal and needful claim on their property, time and 
service. For the achievement of our independence, and more 
recently for the preservation of our institutions, how many were 
called to endure toil, hardship and death. This claim' of the 
State involves the correlative truth that the State has duties as 
well as rights, and foremost among them is the duty of secur- 
ing a good common school education to the children of all 
classes. 

The right of a State to support free schools is little else than 
its right to defend itself by a humanizing and civilizing edu- 
cation against what otherwise would become a degraded and 
dangerous class in society. The right of a free State to self- 
existence implies the right to maintain free schools, essential as 
they are to its preservation and prosperity. Education is the 
cheapest police agency a State can employ. In a wisely admin- 
istered government, educational taxes are the fares which we 
pay on railroad cars, the price for being safely carried and well 
provided for, through the journey of life. These taxes are 
founded primarily not on the idea of benefiting parents and 
children, but the broader view, that the State has a proprietary 
interest in all persons and property within its bounds and espe- 
cially has a stake in her youth that they may be well qualified 



97 



for her service, whether that shall be on the farm, in the fac- 
tory, in the counting room or in the field of arms. It was really 
the better education of the North that saved the Union during 
the late civil war, as it was the ignorance of the "poor white 
trash" making them the dupes of demagogues that rendered the 
rebellion possible in the South. 

In 1868 Grovernor English exerted his influence strongly in 
favor of free schools. In his annual message to the Legisla- 
lature he said : " The rate-bill should be abolished and the 
schools sustained at the common expense." In his parting 
address to the General Assembly of that year he said : " The 
measures which you have adopted to promote the interests of 
the people will meet with a generous approval at their hands. 
Especially will they thank you for the interest you have 
taken in the common schools. In adopting the free school 
system recommended in my annual message, I am confident 
you have taken an important step forward in the cause of edur 
cation, and that your action in this regard will prove as bene- 
ficial in results as the motives which prompted it were free 
from political influence or bias." 

As Governor English intimates, this new law was not in any 
wise a party measure. That a measure so radical should pass 
unanimously in the Senate and with only four nays in the 
House was more than its most sanguine friends expected. The 
press of the State was a unit in its favor. The leading men of 
both parties were its advocates. It is fortunate that on educa- 
tional questions, men of all parties and all religious denomina- 
tions meet on common ground and cordially cooperate for the 
common good. The platforms and creeds, which divide men 
outside, should never enter the common school — common be- 
cause open to all, free to all ; where no class distinctions are 
recognized and no favoritism is shown. 

The law has received an emphatic ratification from the peo- 
ple. Two years later, when its influence in increasing taxa- 
tion had been fully felt, an earnest effort was made in the 
Legislature for its repeal, which signally failed. Opposition 
and discussion helped this measure, as they always do any 
other which can bear close scrutiny and stand the test of ex- 
perience. When the proof was placed before the people that 

B 



98 



thousands of children had been barred from school by the rate- 
bill, it was generally admitted that the results already attained 
proved the wisdom and necessity of the free system. 

The Democratic State Convention, held in Hartford, January 
17, 1871, unanimously adopted the following comprehensive 
resolution : 

" Resolved, That the source of powder being in the people, Free Schools and 
general education are essential to good government and the perpetuation of 
free Institutions." 

The Eepublican State Convention, held in New Haven one 
week later, adopted a resolution equally strong in favor of free 
schools. Since that date, no opposition to the measure has 
been made or intimated in the Legislature. The subject of 
free schools was ably discussed by School Visitors in their 
Reports to their several towns. To give a single illustration of 
the strong and practical way this subject was brought home to 
the people in local reports in 1873, the able Report for Litch- 
field, written by Governor Andrews, then Secretary of the 
Board of School Visitors, said : " The argument in favor of 
free schools is short and decisive. Every person recognizes 
the duty of society to protect the lives of children. Our law 
protects the lives even of children unborn, for the reason that 
it is for the benefit of society that children should be born and 
reared. If, then, society may for its own benefit preserve the 
mere animal existence of a child, the obligation irresistibly 
follows that society must see to it that the life so preserved 
shall develop into a useful, intelligent and moral citizen, and 
not into a ruffian and a curse. The logic is impregnable; 
society should either destroy all children, or guide, protect and 
train them up to careful citizenship. Establish infanticide, or 
some sj^stem of free instruction. But the time for argument 
on the abstract question of free schools in our State is passed. 
As good citizens, we ought to use every effort that the system 
so inaugurated shall be successful." * 

In 1868, a leading objection to the system was its alleged 
tendency to lessen the interest and responsibility of parents. 
The natural argument was that men never value what costs 
them nothing. But the fact is, parents do pay, and all pay 
their fair and equal portion for the support of this central, 



99 



public interest. The poor man who only pays a poll tax 
gives his share as truly as does the millionaire. The systeija 
has manifestly dignified the school in the esteem of both pa- 
rents and pupils, and quickened the educational spirit of the 
whole people. Every tax-payer, having contributed his part 
to the support of the schools, feels that he has a right to look 
after his investment. The details of our public schools are 
better known to parents than are the plans of private schools 
to their patrons. As a result of free schools, the great majority 
of the town reports concur in saying: ''There has been a de- 
cided advance in the number at school, in regularity of attend- 
ance, and in the manifest interest of the people." More than 
ever it is felt that the schools belong to the people. In patron- 
izing them the poorest parent is proudly conscious he has no 
leave to ask, no patron to conciliate, and no alms to beg. Every 
body pays something and feels that it is a good investment, 
and one which justly entitles him to its advantages. 

In the past ten years the increase in enumeration has been 
14,757, while the increase in the number registered in public 
schools has been 20,438. The number in private schools was 
first reported nine years ago, and the increase in that time has 
been 1,526. If it be assumed that the number ten years since 
was the same as nine years ago, — which is very nearly correct, — 
tben the increase in attendance in both public and private 
schools in the last ten years is 21,964, which exceeds the 
increase in enumeration by 7,207. 



NEGLECTED CHILDREN. 



This subject continues to claim attention. As the trend of 
the tide is here against us, to stem it requires constant watch- 
fulness. Without effort, a backset would cover ground well 
nigh reclaimed. For, however well done, this is a work like 
that of a physician, that never stays done. Old cures will not 
stop the breaking out of new cases. Li dealing with negligent 
parents our main reliance has still been kindness and persua- 
sion, appeals to their parental love and pride, their sense of 
duty and their personal interest in view of the great importance 
of education to their children, and the rich privileges freely 
proffered them in the public schools. The same arguments 
have often reached the children, and thus they have gained a 
higher appreciation of the influence of the school upon their 
happiness, thrift and prosperity through life. Teachers as well 
as school officers may greatly help in this good work. It is the 
teachers duty, or rather his privilege, to visit the parents of 
truant or neglected children, learn the causes of delinquency 
and secure parental cooperation. As I have urged this duty, 
a few teachers have asked substantially — " Is that in the bond," 
"what does the law demand?" as if the one ruling thought was — 
what is the minimum work I must do ; but fortunately there 
are but few teachers whose theory and practice limit their 
duties and sympathies to the school house and school hours. 
On the other hand, a large proportion of our teachers, bent on 
doing the utmost good to their pupils, inquire into causes of 
absence from school, visit pupils in sickness, and thus often win 
the confidence and cooperation of parents otherwise captious or 
indifferent. 

Among the causes of absenteeism is the want of proper 
clothing. In these hard times, while many willing hands are 
unable to find employment, this plea is by no means limited to 
the huts or haunts of indolence, intemperence and profligacy. 
Where parents are really too poor to provide comfortable 
clothing, the pressing needs of their children should enlist the 
sympathies of the benevolent. Here true charity may do as 



101 



truly Christian work as by any gifts for missions in pagan 
lands. That charity which really begins at home is at once 
most comprehensive and diffusive. Poor children have often 
been thus provided that they might attend the Sabbath school, 
and this effort is worthy of all praise, but even for morality 
and piety, thirty hours a week in the public school is worth 
far more than one hour in the Sabbath school. In some towns 
the Selectmen have met this exigency. While great caution 
should be used not to encourage indolence and improvidence, 
there are cases of destitution where town aid may be used as 
wisely to prevent starving the mind as famishing the body. 

The fact that nearly ninety-five per cent, of our children are 
reported as in schools of all kinds, shows that the law for the 
prevention of illiteracy has worked beneficently and opened to 
hundreds the door of the school house otherwise closed to them 
forever. The influx of the foreign element suggests the lead- 
ing cause of absenteeism. Those who need the most watching 
are of alien parentage, as yet novices in the English language, 
speaking chiefly a foreign tongue. There is also a large class 
-of native children, whose parents, being illiterate immigrants, 
do not yet appreciate the advantages of education. 

But four parents have been prosecuted and fined during the 
year. Instead of brandishing the penalties of the law, we have 
kept them in the background, and urged mainly the great 
advantages of education. These persuasions are, however, 
sometimes enforced by the delicate hint that we desire to avoid 
the painful duty of prosecution which must follow any and 
every case of willful and open defiance of the law. As will be 
seen by the following report, the prosecution of the employer 
and three parents in one town, resulted in promptly bringing 
seventy children to school. 

It was a very gratifying fact that the superintendent of one 
of the largest factories in the State, after being prosecuted for 
the employment of children who had not received the required 
schooling, and being bound over to the Superior Court, should 
have the manliness to write to the Agent of the Board : " The 
legal measures you took were right and proper, as you used 
every other means in your power, and the law as the last 
resort. From this time, you may be assured, I shall use my 



102 



best efforts to comply with tbe law— and without the law, I 
think the parents would have defeated me in getting their 
children to school, but they now find that they are liable as 
well as myself, and I shall have their cooperation in bringing 
about the desired result. I shall be pleased to see you at any 
time, and have your advice and suggestions in regard to 
educating the children." The sincerity of this declaration was 
evinced by the order promptly given to the overseers, " enforce 
the law for the schooling of children, even if its observance 
should stop the mill." If this superintendent was the greatest 
sinner, he now bids fair to be the best saint in our " canon" of 
employers of children. 

Whatever may be true in monarchical governments, in our 
country there is every motive to kindness and conciliation in 
the execution of this law. Our plan is truly democratic, for 
its entire management is by the people and for the people, 
through school officers chosen by the people and responsible 
to the people, and hence commands popular sympathy. It is 
not pressed upon the people by some higher power, but is their 
own work, embodying their judgment and preferences. The 
old form of compulsory education which existed in Connecticut 
for more than a hundred and fifty years was not forced upon 
the people as "subjects." It was rather a living organism, of 
which they as "sovereigns" proudly claimed the paternity, 
growing up with their growth and recognized as the source of 
their strength and prosperity. After the utmost use of kind- 
ness, tact, and persuasion, and every efi'ort to awaken a dor- 
mant parental pride, and showing that education will promote 
their children's thrift and happiness through life, we find that 
such persuasions are the more effective when it is understood 
that the sanctions of the law might be employed. We have 
used the right to enforce mainly as an argument to persuade. 
As thus used, we know in Connecticut that our law has been 
a moral force. It is itself an effective advocate of education to 
the very class who need it most. It has already accomplished 
great good and brought into the schools many children who 
would otherwise have been absentees. 



FEENCH VIEWS OF AMERICAN SCHOOLb. 



In 1876, the French Government appointed F. Buisson with 
six assistants, to examine and report upon the A merican school 
system. The Commissioners were all educational experts, con- 
nected with the Department of Public Instruction. They 
made a careful inspection of the school exhibits at our Cen- 
tennial Exposition, and visited schools in various states from 
Massachusetts to Missouri. Repeated interviews with Monsieur 
Buisson led me to expect a most valuable Report from an 
observer of such culture, breadth and judgment, aided as he 
was by such eminent associates. This expectation has been 
amply met. Professor Swinton, who has translated a sum- 
mary of this Report, fitly says: "We owe to a Frenchman 
the best statement of the philosopby of American politics. 
And now we shall have to credit to another Frenchman the 
best statement of the philosophy of American education. If 
this Report has not the monumental character of De Tocque- 
ville's Democracy, it is by far the most comprehensive and the 
most valuable analysis thus far made of public instruction in 
the United States. It is our whole free school system, its 
organization, working, methods and results, set forth in its 
glories and in its faults, in its strength and in its weakness, by 
a critic as sympathetic as he is acute. By those who personally 
met the Commissioners, the Report of what they saw and what 
they thought of what they saw, has been awaited with lively 
interest. Well, we have at last after two years the Compte 
rendu of their mission embodied in a great octavo of some 700 
pages, published in Paris under the auspices of the French 
Ministry of Public Instruction. The mere outlay that must 
have attended the mission and the publication of so costly a 
volume, enriched with plates, plans, etc., is a marked compli- 
ment to American education." 

In condensing the following statements so as to read freely, 
I have modified the language of the writer for the sake of brev- 
ity. If the rhetoric has suffered, the thought is retained. 

A republican government needs the whole power of educa- 
tion, said Montesquieu. This sentiment never found a fitter 



« 



104 



illustration than in the United States. If any people ever used 
this " power of education," or united its destinies to the develop- 
ment of its schools, or made public instruction the supreme 
guarantee of its liberties, the condition of its prosperity, the 
safeguard of its institutions, that is most assuredly the people of 
the United States. This role assigned to the school in social 
life has long been the most characteristic feature which foreign- 
ers have observed in American customs. This solicitude for 
the education of youth grows with the growth of the country, 
enters more and more into public opinion, and is incorporated 
in more decisive acts. What in the beginning might seem a 
burst of enthusiasm has gradually assumed the force of a pro- 
found conviction. No longer the work of philanthropists, or 
of religious societies, it has become a public service for which 
states, cities and towns include in their ordinary taxes sums 
which no country in the world, had hitherto thought of conse- 
crating to education. So far from restricting itself to ele- 
mentary education, this generosity extends so as to provide 
free institutions of superior secondary instruction. Public 
opinion approves, nay, enacts these sacrifices, so clear has it 
become to all eyes that the future of the American people will 
be what its schools make it. 

Many causes conspire to give the American school this 
unique importance. At first it was the influence of the Pro- 
testant element. The early settlers of New England knew of 
no grander duty, or more precious privilege than reading the 
Bible. Holding ignorance to be barbarism, the}^ early enacted 
that each town shall have a school and that each family shall 
instruct its children. Tn proportion as their government be- 
came democratic, that which at first was only a religious duty 
became also a political necessity. Where everything depends 
on the will of the people, that will must be enlightened, at the 
risk of utter ruin. Education, useful elsewhere, is here 
essential. Universal suffrage means universal education or 
demagogy. 

This country is peopled by the constant immigration of men 
of every race, class, and religion, who have little in common 
but the desire to better their condition. The mixed and ignor- 
ant crowds who form the bulk of this immigration tend to 



105 



group themselves according to their nationality. Hence they 
need to be Americanized as soon as possible. The Irish, Ger- 
man, French, Scandinavians and Spaniards must not desire to 
constitute themselves a nation in the nation, but these immi- 
grants must themselves be the American nation and make their 
boast of it. What is the instrument of this marvellous trans- 
formation ? What institution has so infused the American 
blood into these thousands of colonists, who have hardly had 
time to forget Europe ? It is the public school, and its useful- 
ness in this direction alone justifies its cost. Suppose that 
instead of these public institutions, the new immigrants could 
find only private schools, all would be changed. Each would 
follow his own ideas and customs, each group would constitute 
itself apart, perpetuating its language, traditions, creed, its 
ancient national spirit and also its own prejudices. Instead of 
accustoming the child to a healthful contact with conflicting 
opinions, the school would be a confessional, the distinction of 
rich and poor, of the child that pays and the charity pupil 
would perpetuate and pronounce itself. It is a capital fact for 
America, thanks to daily contact in the public schools, that 
the antipathy of the white to the colored child has begun to 
yield. And the United States without this fusion of races, 
without unity of language, without the equality of social 
classes, without the mutual tolerance of all the sects, above all, 
without the ardent love of their new country and its institu- 
tions, would that be the United States at all ? All that this 
country has become and is now, is literally due to the public 
school. 

In proportion as a nation advances, the dangers which the 
school is to avert go on increasing. For this reason they 
redouble their efforts and liberality for schools. As the native 
population does not increase as fast as the foreign or mixed 
population, the time may come when the American element, 
the native Yankee^ will be in the minority. Hence the United 
States omit no measure fitted to imbue the new population 
with the American spirit and so assimilate them that they shall 
seize and make the national traditions their own. 

The Profession of Teaching in the United States. — In France a 
person enters the career of teaching with the view of creating 



106 



for himself a stable and permanent position. Those who 
abandon it before obtaining their retiring pension form the 
exception. The young beginner expects to live and die a 
teacher, and as each year adds to his previous experience, the 
time comes when, possessed of adequate theoretical and prac- 
tical knowledge, he is able to discipline his class methodically 
and successfully. 

Not at all thus is it in the United States. The profession of 
teacher seems to be a sort of intermediate stage in one's career 
— a stage at which the young woman awaits an establishment 
suited to her tastes, and the young man a more lucrative posi- 
tion. For many young people, this transitory profession simply 
furnishes the means of continuing their studies. Few male 
teachers remain more than five years in the service; and, if 
the lady teachers show a longer term, it is not to be forgotten 
that marriage is usually the end of their desires, and that, once 
married, they almost always resign their positions. It has 
thus come to pass, by the mere force of circumstances, that 
the school authorities have been led not only to establish 
various regulations for the application of school laws, but also 
to lay down detailed courses of study containing the subjects 
to be taught in each kind of school, in each class, often in each 
division, and this for each term, if not for each month in the 
3^ear. The time-tables in schools that are at all regularly 
attended are fixed in advance, the text-books are chosen by 
the school board ; and finally, school manuals, often of great 
value, are furnished as a vade mecum^ from which teachers 
may derive information as to methods and the various details 
of daily work. 

Time-Tables. — A class in an American public school, even in 
the cities, comprises at, least three divisions or sections, and in 
some classes with not more than forty-five pupils, five sections 
are found. But while in France it is a principle not to go 
beyond three divisions, and to bring these together as frequently 
as possible in collective lessons, such as reading, writing, history, 
geography, object lessons, and dictation — whereby these exer- 
cises receive the amount of time required for some degree of 
fullness in the development of the subject, — the American 
system rarely admits a combination of this kind. Each divi- 



107 



sion has its own separate lessons in the diiSferent branches, with 
an occasional excjeption in the case of oral spelling and object 
lessoDs. Thus in a session of two and one-half hours of actual 
work, we have counted in the primary schools and in the 
country schools as many as fourteen distinct exercises — a 
number reduced to seven in the grammar schools ; but there 
is always one-half at least of the pupils that remain unem- 
ployed, while the others receive their lessons or go through 
their "recitation," as it is called in the United States. This 
everlasting coming and going of study and of recitation gives 
rise to a perpetual movement in the class-room. 

Moreover, as monitors are never employed, it comes to pass 
that a very limited period of time can be given to the lessons, 
and even this time is diminished by the frequent changes of 
place, for generally, in recitation, the pupils leave their seats 
and arrange themselves standing, along the class-room wall, 
and then return to their seats during the fifteen minutes or 
half hour of "study," their place in the meantime being taken 
by others. In many a time-table we have seen lessons in 
reading, arithmetic and history reduced to ten and even to 
five minutes, and, in like manner, general lessons in botany 
and physiology cut down to five minutes in the first grade of 
a grammar school. 

What is to be expected from such a procedure? It is in 
vain that the best arranged programmes are put into the hands 
of teachers, or that the most valuable pedagogic directions are 
laid down for their guidance — their intelligence and their devo- 
tion must both be foiled by the vices of such a system. 

The time-tables — rarer, by the way, than any other docu- 
ments — appear to us the weak part in the organization of 
American schools. There is nothing to indicate that most 
important matter, to wit, the work of those divisions which 
the teacher has not immediately in hand. The pupils are 
"studying," they told us, but what are they studying? Undi- 
rected and un watched, we have our fears as to this "studying." 
*0f course, there must be a great abuse of copying work, that 
mechanical task so justly proscribed in France; and worse 
still, it cannot be possible, owing to the lack of time, to develop 
the reasoning and observing powers of the children. Instruc- 



108 



tion, reduced as it is, per force, to dry recitations or mecbanical 
exercises, is barren in the lower grades, where this evil is the 
worst, while in the higher grades it cannot but be fettered, and 
must produce results below what might be expected from so 
choice a bod}^ of teachers, and so excellent an organization. 

School Manuals. — Every one of the various courses of study 
that we examined has joined to it, by way of complement, 
pedagogic directions for the use of teachers. Prepared, as 
these are, by competent persons, they bring the attention of 
teachers to the carrying out of the courses of study, the mode 
of conducting recitations and the nature and aim of practical 
exercises; in a word, they give the school system a unity tbat 
secures the regular progress of instruction, while it renders 
inspection more effective. 

Country Schools. — Owing to the representations of certain 
enthusiastic travelers, a most lovely idea of the American 
rural school-house is common in France: it is pictured as a 
nest among flowers. Thither resort, each morning, on prancing 
ponies, red-cheeked lassies and lads, grave and proud and 
respectful to their young mates as our cavaliers of the good 
old times. The mistress — herself young — smilingly receives 
them at the entrance, o'ershadowed by great trees. How 
remote is the reality from this picture, this charming exception 
to a state of things still in its rude beginnings! We traversed 
the vast plains where the husbandman struggles against an 
unconquerable vegetation, and the still half-wild valleys in the 
regions of iron, coal and oil, — and it was not our lot to find 
any such school idyl. 

In the country, stone or brick school-houses form the excep- 
tion ; frame buildings, so cold in winter and so scorching in 
summer, are much more numerous, and the log-house has not 
yet disappeared. In the most flourishing States, what com- 
plaints are made against defective school accommodations ! 
Let it not be said that, in describing the rural schools of the 
United States, we have sought out exceptional cases ; we have 
tried our best to do justice to that great country, but we cannot 
conceal the fact that in the rural districts the school-houses are 
poor affairs and poorly equipped. Thus in Pennsylvania and 
New Hampshire, out of twentj^-two teachers' reports, fourteen 



109 



stated that the class-rooms were absolotely destitute of every- 
thing in the way of means for visual instruction, that is, there 
were neither maps nor blackboards ; two schools bad one map 
each ; one school possessed an old globe ; other schools no 
blackboards and no reading books ; a single school was fur- 
nished with suitable apparatus. 

The Courses of Study in Ungraded Schools are still in the tenta- 
tive period, not to say in a state of chaos. Some are too suc- 
cinct and barely outlined ; others reflect the personal predilec- 
tions of the teacher and show that ingenuous pedantry so often 
found associated with total inexperience. Sometimes a good 
deal less than the required course is done ; sometimes it is 
greatly exceeded ; such studies as history, music, composition, 
drawing and book-keeping being taken up, and in some cases 
algebra, physiology, geology, natural philosophy, and rhetoric 
even. 

The worst evil from which rural schools suffer is irregularity 
of attendance. Teachers and superintendents bitterly complain 
of this. As a partial remedy, and as a means of allowing chil- 
dren to attend school without wholly depriving parents of their 
help, some States have lately established a number of " half- 
time" classes, in which attendance is reduced to a single session 
per day. This measure has everywhere been followed by good 
results, and it would perhaps be advantageous to introduce it 
into our French system, for the summer terra at least, and in 
the case of the older pupils. 

Jlie Country School-houses are still in many instances built of 
wood, as are many of the finest dwellings, but they are frame 
buildings well put together, painted, and conveniently lighted. 
More frequently the constructions are of pressed brick with 
stone trimmings and slate roofs. You have only to see these 
coquettish school-houses, in the midst of vast lawns, shaded 
with fine trees and surrounded by palings, to judge of the place 
which the school holds in public opinion. It is indeed a 
national institution, devoted to the education of "boys whose 
votes will decide the fate of the Eepublic, and of girls, one of 
whom may be the mother of the president of the United States." 

What specially distinguishes the country school-house of the 
United States from that of Europe is the absence of lodgings 



110 



for master or mistress. Nowhere in the United States is this 
arrangement found. It is an evidence of a state of things not 
without its unfortunate side: the teacher is engaged for a year 
simply; he is paid by the month, and most frequently his 
certificate has but a limited duration. Under these circum- 
stances he but comes and goes ; when he is not a resident of 
the locality, he takes board for the school term and has nothing 
but a study or office in the school-house. 

School-houses of New York City. — In the school buildings in 
New York City everything is sacrificed to the reception hall 
with its vast platform, fitted to hold a desk, several arm-chairs 
and a piano. In the hall it is that the stranger visiting the 
school is received. The movement of five or six hundred chil- 
dren entering in good order, to the sound of the piano, from 
six or eight adjoining rooms, while the folding doors opening 
below, show the smallest scholars ranked on steps — all this 
makes a fine show ; but it is purchased too dearly, if the studies 
and the health of the children are to suffer thereby, as we can- 
not but think that they must 

The Kindergarten. — ^Infant Schools, which in France precede 
the primary school, form no part of the public school sj^stem 
of the United States. The few infant schools which exist are 
private establishments, or else free institutions, without legal 
recognition. Nevertheless, since 1871, Kindergartens on the 
Froebel plan have been attached to some of the public schools 
of Boston and St. Louis, and these establishments are every 
year gaining ground in a quite marked manner in all the States. 
The obstacles still encountered by the Kindergarten arise partly 
from American domestic manners, and partly from the prejudice 
which this German importation arouses in the minds of certain 
superintendents. 

Woman in America is much less employed than she is in 
France, Belgium, and England, in industrial employments that 
take her from her household. ''Home, Sweet Home" is for 
the Anglo-Saxon a species of worship, and in this sphere the 
wife is to maintain order, peace and happiness, by attending 
to her husband and children. It is not to be thought of that 
she should go to a place of employment in the morning and 
stay there till evening. The hearth must not be cold nor the 



Ill 

house forsaken. And this is the motive that withdraws married 
women from public school-teaching. For what would become 
of her "home," and who would take care of her husband and 
children, when she was at school — generally considerably 
removed from her abode ? In America the mother is the first 
instructor of her children, and generally she teaches them to 
read before sending them to public school. 

In the Kindergarten exhibits at Philadelphia we noticed 
everywhere the application of Froebel's ideas, designed to 
interest children while amusing them, to excite and direct their 
attention, to accustom them to represent or put together objects 
of their own devising. 

But with Americans the practical spirit is too strong for 
them readily to accept what does not offer an immediate result. 
One of the objections they urge against the Kindergarten is 
that it does not teach reading, writing and arithmetic (the three 
E's). Indeed, these institutions are not likely to meet full 
acceptance in the United States until it shall be shown that 
the general training they give to very young children will 
induce rapid school-progress, until it shall be shown that chil- 
dren bring from the Kindergarten a certain stock of practical 
notions. Besides, there is the question of expense, and how 
can $16 be gotten for the education of a child of from 3 to 7 
years of age, when this costs only $10 or $12 for a pupil of 
from 7 to 10 years of age ? If the Kindergarten has made its 
way at but a few points in the United States, it is the object of 
an active advocacy and has the sympathy of eminent educators. 
The application it has already received tends to free the Froebel 
system of any too exclusive form, and to adapt it to the wants 
and the genius of the country. This same result we should 
seek to attain in France, with the view of infusing life into our 
infant schools, and awakening the faculties of the child, instead 
of putting them to sleep by merely mechanical modes of pro- 
cedure. 

Reading. — The reading of the French language certainly 
presents sufficient difficulty ; but the extreme complication 
and the numerous anomalies of English pronunciation render 
the teaching of reading in that tongue a still more delicate 



112 



problem. Hence, in the United States, great ingenuity has 
been expended in the discovery of practical and speedy meth- 
ods. Germany has furnished many plans which have been 
ingeniously modified and applied. 

The ancient alphabetic method is now scarcely used at all in 
good schools. It is the longest and most monotonous method 
— and it is the method best known in France. This method 
was not represented at the Exposition. Even in the country 
schools in the United States, there are not on the average 
twenty in a hundred that use the old spelling plan, and in 
many States it is not employed at all. Manifestly public 
opinion has pronounced for the new methods. 

In the phonic method, imported from Germany, the teacher 
drills the child first in the pronunciation of the sounds of the 
language, then in distinguishing the signs by which these are 
represented. He thus proceeds from the sound to the symbol, 
from the letter uttered to the letter figured, in place of passing 
from the name of the letter to its phonic value, which is often 
very difiicult. However, this method, applied strictly and in 
its whole scope, assumes that, as is the case of German, a given 
letter always corresponds with a given sound, and this is not 
the case w^ith the English language. Hence many objections 
have been raised to the purely phonic method, which indeed 
had to be modified into the word method or the phonetic 
method. 

The phonic method, even when aided by all the American 
improvements of the word method, will always meet with grave 
objections. Excellent for German and Spanish, in which a 
letter hns rarely more than a single power, it encounters in 
French, and still more so in English, anomalies resulting from 
the constant use of the same sign for different sounds, or of two 
different signs for the same sound, not to speak of useless 
double consonants, silent letters, etc. This consideration has 
led to the invention, by Dr. Edwin Leigh, of a method based 
on the same principle, but which in its application has recourse 
to typographical innovations. In many schools the teachers 
make use of the Leigh method in connection with the word 
method, and this is called the eclectic method, for in America 
every new device assumes a pretentious name. 



113 



In most of the schools visited by us, special importance is 
attached to class exercises in pronunciation. The lady teachers 
throw a certain ardor into the work of articulation, and, if need 
be, they show the play of the vocal organs in the production 
of a given sound or element, as for instance th hard, or guttural 
r, etc. It is to be desired that this were done in France, and 
that our teachers appreciated the utility of this vocal gym- 
nastic, as bearing on reading or even on spelling. No pains 
are spared to give the pupils a correct pronunciation, not only 
in the primary but also in the most advanced classes. The 
master reads in a loud intelligible voice a passage from the 
Keader suited to the grade. The pupils repeat it in the same 
tone and with the same inflections. This is one of the liveliest 
and most curious exercises in an American school, and one 
which we have often witnessed with the keenest interest. The 
preceding account proves what importance is attached to read- 
ing in the United States. The method employed, very gener- 
ally a rational one, secures the speedy acquisition of reading, 
and inspires pupils with the love of reading ; this is, doubtless, 
one of the reasons why there is no other country where people 
read better or read more. 

(The two following recommendations to French teachers, 
drawn from the Commissioners' observations of American meth- 
ods of teaching reading, merit the special attention of school 
officers and teachers of Connecticut). 1, To render primary 
instruction in reading not only more attractive^ hut more profitable^ 
hy enlivening it by means of object lessons, and carrying it forward 
in connection with writing and rudimentary drawing. 2. To give 
more attention to pronunciation, delivery, emphasis, and expressive 
reading. 

The Mother Tongue. — The courses of study and the directions 
for teaching the English language reveal everywhere a truly 
practical spirit, and are full of judicious considerations. It is 
with entire justice that distinction is made between language 
training and grammatical study. It is readily understood that 
the English language, in which the laws of concord amount to 
scarcely anything, may content itself with this practical study. 
French, which deals more in rules and orthographic details, 
requires more attention to grammar, 
c 



114 



Two abuses strike us in the numerous papers on grammar 
and analysis that came under our eye. 1. The complication of 
parsing and analysis. In France also we carry written parsing 
too far, for everywhere routine acts in the same way and trans- 
forms into a mechanical exercise what, within proper limits, 
ought to be a valuable intellectual discipline. 2. Subtlety of 
distinction and complicated terminology. In grammatical in- 
struction it seems to the Americans that the simplicity of Eng- 
lish syntax ought to be made up for by a lavish use of scholastic 
distinctions, which, unfortunately, correspond to nothing in the 
construction of language. Dictation exercises which occupy 
so prominent a place in our French schools, are rare in the 
United States. 

A feature that deserves unreserved praise, and which we 
found in the better schools in the United States, is the develop- 
ment of the inventive faculty of the pupil by means of compo- 
sition-exercises outlined in the most general manner. Even in 
the primary schools the teachers are beginning to require the 
pupils to write out an account of what is represented in a 
picture in the text-book or in a chromo placed before them. 
This is a capital exercise, and one that we cannot too stronglv 
recommend for adoption in our French schools. The task con- 
sists simply in practicing the scholar in observing attentively, 
in telling what he sees, and in telling this in an orderly manner. 

Geogra'phy has long been a favorite study in American 
schools. It could not be otherwise in a country that has so 
many reasons for devoting itself to this science, — the immense 
extent of its territory, the great diversity in its phyiscal con- 
ditions, resources and population, the importance of its com- 
mercial relations with the whole world, not to mention the 
circumstances of its origin, whence it results that no land is 
absolutely foreign to it. 

In response to a well understood want, geographical instruc- 
tion early assumed a methodical form : this form, without being 
original, has still an American character, something national 
and sui generis. The old mode of instruction, bristling with 
repulsive nomenclatures which in nowise spoke to the mind or 
the imagination, and which merely loaded the memory, is still 
doubtless found in a multitude of rural schools ; for in speak- 



115 



ing of the United States in general, it must never be forgotten 
that tliere is a distance of nearly half a centurj^ between the 
countr}^ school, properly so-called, and the town or city school. 

One of the happiest symptoms that strike the attention at the 
slightest examination is that geographical study now almost 
always begins where it ought to begin — hy making the child 
acquainted with the neighborhood^ hy a plan of the class room^ the 
school-house^ the street^ the village ; in a word, a knowledge of the 
points of the compass, not merely on the map and as a matter 
of definition, but in nature, in a given locality. This very fact 
is an indication justifying the belief that geographical reform 
has penetrated deeply into educational practice, for it is gener- 
ally by such beginnings that this reform ends. It is more 
difficult to bring about a rectification in the manner of teaching 
these rudiments than it is to perfect subsequent instruction. 
And that this progress has been made in the United States is 
manifest in every way, — by the text-books, the courses of study, 
and the numberless specimens of work done by the scholars. 
The strong point in all this new geographical training is that it 
is really a series of object lessons, that it begins with the child's 
own stock of knowledge instead of overwhelming him with 
abstractions and definitions. ' 

Without overlooking the progress already made, we received 
the general impression that the new methods have not yet pen- 
etrated into the heart of primary teaching ; they are known 
and applied sometimes in an admirable manner in the larger 
cities and in elite schools, but they are still unknown in most 
country schools, and between these two extremes are thou- 
sands of schools which as yet have hardly begun to feel the 
influence of the new ideas, and thousands that have the letter 
without the spirit thereof. The following features of Ameri- 
can geographical teaching are recommended as w^orthy of imi- 
tation : — 

I. To hegin with the synthetic method^ which^ starting luith local 
; geography^ progressively enlarges the horizon of siudy^ hut not to 

, ■ dwell too long on local geography ; to give pupils notions of general 
geography and cosmography as soon as they are ahle to receive them. 

II. To practice pupils early in map drawing from memory and 
in reproducing on the hlachhoards the proximate forms of countries. 



116 



III. To insist on the descriptive part^ without going out of the 
way to seek the picturesque^ and paying particular attention to 
imparting correct ideas on the relief of countries^ their general fea- 
tures^ the nature of the soil, climate, production, etc., above all, great 
attention to what the English calV^ physiography.'" 

Arithmetic. — In American schools nothing is equal to the care 
with which the child is trained in the intelligent application 
of the four ground rules. No sooner does the pupil know the 
simplest numbers, 1, 2, 3, that is the ah c oi calculation, than 
means are found for setting him to work in combining them 
by addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, in such a 
way as to bring into play all the faculties of attention, reflec- 
tion and judgment. Beyond this first stage, the teaching of 
arithmetic generally quits the good way we have indicated, 
and ceases to be the supreme agency of intellectual culture. 
It seems as though the sole aim now were to impart hastily 
the practical means of resolving this or that kind of operation. 

The principles that might light up the progress of the pupil 
and exercise his wits are almost voluntarily left aside. He 
commits to memory how, in a given case, he should state a 
proposition, what rule he should follow — whether or not he has 
learnt the lohy — and he applies the rule, with confidence and 
in a routine manner to exercises similar to that which served 
as an example. Practice before theory — such is the idea that 
generally prevails. And the method of proceeding is gener- 
ally as follows : The teacher, or one of the most advanced 
pupils, sets forth on the blackboard each point in an operation 
to be learned, while the pupils follow, verifying in their book 
the course indicated ; then the latter reproduce on their slates 
the same work, retain the rule by heart and apply it, point by 
point, to new examples. The rationale of the procedure is 
given only in case the curiosity or good sense of the scholar 
calls it out. 

Great efforts are now making to bring back arithmetical 
teaching to a more rational way, to ally in just measure theory 
and practice, by a recurrence to the principles of analysis as 
well as of synthesis. By the solution of a good many prob- 
lems of the same kind, dealing with quite small numbers the 
pupil is led to formulate for himself the method to be pursued 



117 



in the exercises assigned to him. His memory is then not the 
only faculty brought into play ; he reasons and draws conclus- 
ions ; his good sense develops, he acquires correct language, 
acquires a taste for what he does, and gains strength for greater 
difficulties. Arithmetic has its principles and its axioms, just 
as geometry has, and it is by setting them forth, by develop- 
ing them logically that the pupil's intellect is sharpened and 
his judgment exercised and himself fitted for the intelligent 
practice of calculation. [The following American methods 
recommended to French educators, need to be more generally 
applied by our teachers. 

I. To prepare children for the study of arithmetic hy the use of 
the abacus^ without prolonging this exercise too much. 

II. To extend the me of mental calculation^ as well in the form 
of operations carried on in the head as in that of the rapid solution 
of such problems. 

III. Not to he afraid of practicing children from an early age in 
mental calculation^ fractions^ complex mimhers^ the metric system — 
the whole presented not in the rigorous and definitive order of ulterior 
instruction^ hut under the common^ elementally^ analogical^ and^ so 
to speak, provisional form suited to a first survey of the suhject. 

Drawing in the Public Schools. — Six year«s ago drawing was 
taught only in certain special schools, and that in a very imper- 
fect manner : there were no models, no methods, no materials, 
no masters. A committee was formed, and in a few years a 
whole system of instruction was devised. In some states, Draw- 
ing has been made obligatory ; four methods, strictly graded 
and completing one another, bring the arts of designing within 
the reach of pupils of all ages ; public expositions are increas- 
ing ; all regular teachers are put in the way of teaching this 
branch of education ; a normal school of art, to which flock 
pupils from all parts, has been founded and a fruitful emulation 
has arisen among various cities. If we take into account that 
these are the fruits of a few years of trial, it must be acknowl- 
edged that such remarkable results were never before obtained 
in so short a time. The following are the recommendations 
made on the subject of drawing : 

I. To commence drawing as soon as the child enters school, hy 
slate or blackboard exercises, using the aid of squares or better style 



118 



of points regularly placed in such a luay as to leave to the pupil the 
drawing of the lines. 

IT. To advance gradually from the straight line to elementary 
geometrical figures^ then to more complex combinations^ and so to 
industrial and ornamental drawing. 

III. Especially to 'practice the eye hy elementary studies in per- 
spective^ hy the recognition of distances hy sight^ and hy the observa- 
tion and comparison of forms. 

lY. To proscribe drawing by mere fancy or chance^ which falsi- 
fies the taste. 

y. To organize for pupil-teachers methodical courses of drawing 
suited to their future wants. 

High Schools. — Everywhere High Schools are the special 
object of attention on the part of School Boards and towns 
having over 500 families — say from 2,000 to 2,500 inhabitants, 
do not shrink from taxing themselves for their suitable accom- 
modation. In most cases, these schools are for both sexes. 
No part of the American school system is more essentially 
national than are the High Schools, no part of the system pre- 
sents features that are more original, or, in some respects, 
further removed from European ideas, no part of the system is 
worthy of more profound study. Peruse the course of study 
in these High Schools ; think of those children of workmen and 
work-women passing four or five years in adorning, strength- 
ening and cultivating their minds by studies that everywhere 
else are reserved for the well-to-do classes, and tell us if these 
institutions do not bear the very seal and impress of American 
civilization. Need one be astonished, then, at the frank pride 
with which the American citizen speaks of these schools ? Has 
he not a right to be proud when, by sure documentary evi- 
dence, he shows us the son and the daughter of the humblest 
artisan so mentally elevated that between them and the privi- 
leged of fortune no difference of culture, no trace of intellect- 
ual inferiority, is to be discovered ? If it is glorious to see 
society freely giving to the poor the benefit of a public school 
education, is it not a still more extraordinary spectacle to 
behold a nation that deems it would wrong its humblest citi- 
zens were their children denied any opportunity for the full 
and free expansion of their minds? Here is a country where 



119 



there are hundreds of free High Schools, on the same footing as 
the most primary establishments. They are of one body with 
the common schools, are administered by the same authorities, 
supported by the same funds, and intended for the same popu- 
lation ; and yet, instead of being limited to the strictly essential 
studies, to the minimum of knowledge required to take children 
out of the official category of the illiterate, these upper schools 
are established on the basis of what may be called the higher 
instruction. They are not professional schools, nor are 
they bastard imitations of the classical college, nor yet low 
grade universities — they are in the fullest sense popular 
schools, intended to give the people the best, purest and 
loftiest results of liberal education. They open up no special 
pursuit — they lead to all pursuits, without exception and with- 
out distinction. They do not make an engineer, an architect, 
or a physician, anj more than they make an artisan or a mer- 
chant, but they form bright, intelligent youths trained to stud- 
ies of every kind, qualified to select for themselves among the 
various professions, and skilled to succeed therein. One grad- 
uate will enter the university, another will go into business ; 
there will be differences of occupation among them, but there 
will be no inequality of education. 

So far as social equality can possibly be 'reached on this earth, it 
is attained by the American High School. In other countries it is 
to be feared that the children of different classes of society, 
though brought together for a while in the public school, must 
soon find themselves separated by the whole distance between 
their respective families ; indeed, it must be so, since one child 
enters on his apprenticeship and thus stops short in his intel- 
lectual development at the very time when the other is just 
beginning his. In the United States every effort is made to 
delay and to diminish this separation, to carry as far as possi- 
ble, and as high as possible, that common instruction which 
eflfac3s the distinction of rich and poor. 

If it be true that the prosperity of a republic is in the direct 
ratio of the replenishment of its middle classes, of the abun- 
dance and facility in the indefinite recruiting of these classes, 
then the High School of the United States, whatever it may 
cost, is the best investment of capital that can possibly be made. 



120 



[Of the conclusions reached by the Commissioners, the fol- 
lowing are the most practical and suggestive to Americans.] 

Summary of Conclusions. — 1. The common schools of the 
United States are essentially a national institution ; they are 
dear to the people, respected by all, created, sustained and 
enriched by a unanimous spirit of patriotism which for a cen- 
tury has shown no falling off; in a word, they are deemed the 
very source of public prosperity, as, par excellence^ the conserv- 
ative and protective institution in their democratic govern- 
ment and republican manners. 

2. The school organization is rigorously municipal. The 
law simply establishes as a principle the necessity of public 
instruction, leaving to each community to provide for its own 
needs in its own way. 

8. The higher direction and the inspection of the public 
schools are confided to elective boards. From this peculiarity 
arise various results, as, for instance, the frequent renewing of 
the Boards and Superintendents, the unfortunate influence of 
political prejudices and local interests, the liability to sudden 
changes in the school organization, aYid, finally, the necessity 
imposed on the people to keep themselves informed on school ques- 
tions, as matters on which they have constantly to vote. 

4. The public schools are in all grades absolutely free : the 
abolition of fees was in every State the signal of the new birth 
of the public schools ; it brought into these establishments the 
children of all classes of the population, and constantly tends 
to bring them nearer and nearer together. 

5. The public schools are absolutely unsectarian. 

6. Compulsory education, made matter of law in some States, 
has doubtless aided the development of common school instruc- 
tion. The results thus far ascertained are not very striking ; 
and besides it is impossible either to pass or to carry out the 
measure in the very region where its urgency is most pressing, 
that is, in the South. In general, the most practical form that 
compulsion has assumed is the hunting up of vagabond chil- 
dren or the adoption of various measures to force them into 
school, to begin with, and then, if need be, to transfer them to 
reform schools or other special establishments. 

7. Public school instruction in the United States does not 



121 



form a course of study apart, strictly limited to a minimum or 
completely distinct from classical instruction ; it comprises 
three degrees — the primary, the grammar school, and the high 
school course — sometimes combined in a single school, and 
again subdivided among three different schools, but in all cases 
connecting with the higher education, whether literary or profes- 
sional, so that a child of the working class has the opportunity 
of gratuitously continuing his education as far as his tastes and 
aptitudes permit. 

8. The training of teachers is now almost universally regarded 
as the essential condition of sound, popular education, and the 
number of State Normal Schools is rapidly increasing. 

9. As the career of teaching is often taken up merely pro- 
visionally by young men or women who do not intend to con- 
tinue in the field, there results a very grievous instability in 
the teaching force — though it should be observed that there is 
some compensation for this evil in the fact that it draws into 
the work a large number of young schoolmasters full of ardor, 
equipped beyond the needs of the common school course, and 
untrammelled by the spirit of routine. 

10. The coeducation of the sexes is the rule in the American 
public school system, and except in some of the great cities is 
becoming more and more the rule. The results of this usage 
are generally represented as excellent in both the moral and 
the intellectual aspect The only or at least the chief objec- 
tions heard, are based on the excess of labor which the system 
imposes on young girls. 

11. From these causes and from the marked taste of Amer- 
icans for innovation and new departures, it has come to pass 
that the schools of the United States show a diversity of organ- 
ization, and a multiplicity of forms, courses of study, text- 
books, and methods, which result in much experimentation 
and a lamentable loss of time ; but which, by leaving a great 
deal to the free choice and responsibility of teachers and local 
authorities, interests them directly and personally in the suc- 
cess of the school. 

12. Thence result, also, extraordinary efforts and boundless 
liberality directed to giving the schools, both in the construc- 
tion of the buildings and in the establishment and maintenance 



122 



of the institutions, an air of comfort, of amplitude, and almost 
luxury, which is not merely a satisfaction to municipal pride, 
but is mainly the means of giving the public schools the prestige 
necessary to bring within their fold all classes of the population 
without distinction. 

18. The great publicity given to the Keports of Committees 
and Superintendents, the interest taken by the people in school 
statistics, and the beautiful and simple organization of the 
National Bureau of Education do more for the growth and 
improvement of educational institutions than could possibly 
be accomplished by the orders of any administrative authority, 
even though clothed with the most extensive power. 

14. If, with all these educational facilities, the United States 
still show a considerable proportion of illiterate population, 
the explanation is found, first, in the fact that the whole South 
is yet a region to be conquered for public school instruction, 
and secondly, because immigration is incessantly bringing in 
a fresh contingent of illiterate adults. 

15. The educational methods of the United States are in 
general distinguished from our own by two characteristics, 
which may by turns be either advantages or defects. On the 
one hand they tend to become essentially objective, synthetic, 
analogical, active. On the other hand, they are eminently 
practical, being planned and practiced with reference to the 
wants of life and to direct utility. 

16. And so in the choice of subjects to be taught, the 
American system is marked by the selection of the most indis- 
pensable matters, of the most rapid methods, of the most 
positive successes, of those advantages which if not the most 
important for mental improvement, have the most direct bear- 
ing on the present or future interest of the pupil, — an aim 
which is very well in principle, but which, when too exclusively 
sought, stamps study with an empirical and utilitarian impress, 
gives a narrowness to education, and to a certain extent cramps 
the mind itself. 

17. As regards methods of teaching, the American system rec- 
ommends itself by a frequent appeal to the pupil's own powers, 
to his intellectual and moral spontaneity. It cares less for the 
logical order of ideas than it does for the natural order of 



123 



impressions ; it leaves a large independence to the teacher and 
a still larger to the scholar, — whence an extreme diversity in 
the modes of procedure and a not less striking inequality in 
the results. Many and many a time one is struck with the 
hasty, rapid, almost improvised character of a plan of educa- 
tion which trusts implicitly to good instincts, good sense, and 
good will, which aims ever to address the eye, the memory, the 
imagination, which would thus gain time over the old strictly 
didactic methods, but which by so doing, runs the risk of 
becoming somewhat superficial, and is in danger sometimes of 
dispensing too much with the severe but fruitful labors of 
abstraction and reasoning. 

We are not of those who, ignorant of the marvellous proofs 
of moral and material vitality which the United States have 
shown, think that we have discovered in this grand body the 
germ of decomposition and prophesy its near ruin. This is 
perhaps the people, of all the earth, which has in its immense 
domains the grandest deposits of natural riches ; in its temper- 
ament and character the most powerful motive to action ; in its 
historical traditions the noblest example of energy, efficiency, 
courage and civic honor, and in its institutions the system best 
fitted to favor the rise of liberty, and these are some of the 
forces which ought to resist the toughest trials. But while we 
do not overlook these most promising signs, we do not conceal 
the formidable problems which the country has still to solve. 
The antagonism of races, traditions and interests which brought 
on the bloody conflict between the North and the South, the 
irruption of the blacks into public life, a just but terrible pun- 
ishment of a civic wrong, the difficult}^ of long maintaining the 
bonds which unite peoples so diverse, spread over a territory 
so immense; all these are grave questions. These however are 
thrown in the shade by a danger more immediate, and that is 
the alteration, say rather the corruption of political morals, the 
question of elections, and especially the election of President, 
whether this shall be made by the intelligence and virtue of 
the people, or whether it will veer about and become the prey 
of intrigue and corruption. 



CLINTON EUEAL IMPEOVEMENT ASSOCIATION. 



As calls are often made for a plan for Yillage Improvement 
Societies, I insert that adopted in Clinton. 

1. This Association shall be called "The Eural Improvement 
Association of Clinton." 

2. The object of this Association shall be to cultivate public 
spirit, quickcD the social and intellectual life of the people, 
promote good fellowship, and secure public health by better 
hygienic conditions in our homes and surroundings, improve 
our streets, roads, public grounds, side-walks, and in general 
to build up and beautify the whole town, and thus enhance the 
value of its real estate and render Clinton a still more inviting 
place of residence. 

3. The officers of this Association shall consist of a President, 
a Yice-President, a Treasurer, a Secretar}-, and an Executive 
Committee of fifteen, six of whom shall be ladies. 

4. It shall be the duty of the Executive Committee to make 
all contracts, employ all laborers, expend all moneys, and 
superintend all improvements made by the Association. The}^ 
shall hold meetings monthly from April to October in each 
J ear, and as much oftener as they may deem expedient. 

5. Ever}" person, who shall plant three trees by the road side, 
under the direction of the Executive Committee, or pay three 
dollars in one year or one dollar annually, and obligate himself 
or herself to pay the same annuall}^ for three years, shall be a 
member of this Association. 

6. The payment of ten dollars annually for three years, or of 
twenty-five dollars in one sum, shall constitute one a life 
member of this Association. 

7. Five members of the Executive Committee present at any 
meeting shall constitute a quorum. 

8. No debt shall be contracted by the Executive Committee 
beyond the amount of available means within their control, 
and no member of the Association shall be liable for any debt 
of the Association, beyond the amount of his or her subscription. 

9. The Executive Committee shall call an annual meeting, 
giving due notice of the same, for the election of officers of this 
Association, and at said meeting, shall make a detailed report 
of all moneys received and expended during the year, the 
number of trees planted under their direction, and the number 
planter' by individuals, length of side- walks made or repaired, 
and the doings of the Committee in general. 

10. This constitution may be amended at any annual meet 
ing by a two-thirds vote of the members present and voting. 



TREE PLANTING, 



FORESTRY IN EUROPE, 



AND OTHER PAPERS. 




B. G. NO:RTHIiOP, 



Seceetary of Connecticut Board of Education. 



NEW HAVEN : 

TUTTLE, MOREHOUSE & TAYLOR. 
1 8 8 0. 



